#248 | Exploring the Depths of Scripture: The Importance of the Whole Story with Christopher J.H. Wright, Pt. 1

Welcome to those who Serve the Lord, a podcast for those at the front lines of ministry. You've given your life to serve. But what happens when the well runs dry?

If you've felt the weight of leadership, the tension between tradition and change, or the challenge of staying faithful while engaging culture, you're not alone. I'm Travis Michael Fleming, founder and executive director of Apollo's Watered, the Center for Discipleship and Cultural Apologetics.

I've been at the front lines for over 25 years, leading churches to become thriving testimonies of God's grace. I've wrestled with the same questions you're facing, and I've seen how God brings renewal even in the hardest seasons.

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Welcome to those who Serve the Lord. Today we're diving into one of the most foundational, yet often misunderstood aspects of our faith, the biblical story.

How we understand and tell that story shapes not only our beliefs, but actually how we live and serve. See, that's the struggle when we're telling God's story.

When we don't get the story straight, it becomes easy to reduce the Bible to a collection of moral lessons, inspiring quotes, or simply disconnected stories. And when we do that, we actually miss the grand narrative, God's story of creation, fall, redemption, and restoration.

And in doing so, we actually lose our greater place within it. You see, without this larger framework, we risk twisting the gospel into something small, self centered, and even unrecognizable.

That's why I am thrilled to have Christopher J.H. wright with us today.

Chris is a leading voice in biblical theology and missiology, and his latest book, the Great Story and the Great Commission, is a powerful call to recover the whole story of Scripture. He reminds us that the Great Commission isn't just about making converts.

It's about making disciples who are shaped by God's grand narrative and equipped to live it out. So what happens when we get the story straight? And what are the consequences when we don't?

We're going to explore these questions and more as we dive into this conversation. Let's get started.

Thank you, Travis. It's great to be with you. Thank you.

What was the reason that you felt the need to write this book?

Well, there were several reasons together. One was I was asked to do It. It's always a good reason. That's to say it's based on some guest lectures that I gave at Acadia University in Canada.

And I was asked to give. They actually happened during the pandemic during COVID so they were done online.

I couldn't go physically, but the lectures that I gave at their invitation. Oh, and they also said part of the deal was that if you do these three lectures, they would want it to be turned into a book.

That was sort of part of the arrangement.

For several years, I'd been teaching on the Missional Training center, which you mentioned earlier on, that you're a great friend of Michael Golden Goheen, or Mike Goheen as most of us know him.

And he had invited me to participate in a rather creative and innovative way of helping pastors to think missionally and to develop a biblical mission theology and to have a missional understanding of the Bible.

And I'd been asked when I was over there in Arizona in those days, I was going there about twice a year because Langham Partnership had an office there. And so I would get involved with these pastors from all around the Phoenix area.

And we'd sit together between 6am and 9am with breakfast in the middle. It was incredible.

They all drove in from their day jobs to this seminar, and I'd be asked to talk about, you know, a missional reading of Deuteronomy or a missional reading of Jeremiah or so on. So I was increasingly developing a way of trying to fit these different books into an overarching scriptural narrative.

And at the same time, I had come across the book by Michael Kohen and Craig Bartholomew, the Drama of Scripture, which is an excellent book in which I think they pick up an idea which I. Not sure if it originally goes back to Tom Wright, but he spoke about the Bible.

And our mission is a bit like a play, a great play of Shakespeare, in which we know the first four acts because we have our Bible and we know the beginning, we know Israel, we know Jesus, we know the Book of Acts, and we know how it's all going to end. It'll all come to an end when Christ returns.

But in the middle, we are in an act of the drama, which, in a sense, we have to improvise because we are now participants in this story. And so we are playing our part creatively in a drama of which we know how it's been shaped and where it's all come from up to here.

We know the director, we know the script so far, and we know the conclusion, but we have to live within it. And they develop this into the drama of Scripture. And I.

I so like that idea that I actually took over some of the symbols which another friend of mine from Phoenix, Chris Gonzales, had developed literally on the back of an envelope. He called them the true story symbols with an arrow coming down. In the beginning, God created the earth, and then a big cross, it all went wrong.

And then an arrow, God promises Abraham, then the cross, then mission, then the new creation. And I was so struck by that that I thought, you know, I'd love to just make a whole lecture as it were, developing that and explaining that. So that.

And I did it in quite a number of churches and, you know, mission weekends. And so. And I would say, let's think about how the whole Bible tells the story of God's mission and then go through my seven acts.

And so I took that for the Acadia lecture, plus the idea of the five marks of mission. Mission includes evangelism, obviously, discipleship, works of love, compassion, justice and creation care, and sort of stitch those together into.

I think it was either two or three lectures.

So when it came then to writing the book, it was a matter of sort of expanding all of that, writing it up more fully and passing it through the excellent editorial processes of Baker. It's published with Baker, and I think they did a very good job. They certainly did a good job with me in terms of the editing of it.

Let's talk about the concept of story. What happens, though, if we don't tell the story right? I mean, many of us, we have this idea that we just need this one little part.

Just give me the essentials. But you're saying no, we need to have a full view of the narrative of this story. What happens?

I mean, first of all, number one, why is the story so important to get the whole story right? And number two, what happens if we don't tell the story right?

Easiest answer to why is the story so important is because it is the shape of the Bible. It's the way God's given us the Scriptures. I mean, obviously, the Bible is a collection of documents from many different centuries and authors.

It's a library which we believe God in his providence and wisdom, inspired the original writers and authors to write these documents and books. But I would also want to say that it's in God's providence that we receive these Scriptures now in the shape of a canon of Scripture.

The Old Testament, the law, the prophets, the writings, beginning with creation, and a New Testament which begins obviously with Christ, but takes us right through to the revelation of the new creation. So in God's providence, we have most sacred thing, apart from the Lord Jesus Christ himself.

This book which has the shape, the canonical shape of a narrative. Now, it's not an easy, simple, straightforward story.

You know, once upon a time, then this happened and then that happened, and then something finished. It's much more like the Amazon river basin. Lots of tributaries, lots of contributing things going on, different genres.

There is narrative, but there's also poetry and songs and prophecy and laws, et cetera, et cetera. But it's all moving forward. It's all purposeful.

It all has this sense of direction towards God's purposes in Christ and then God's purposes in your creation. So I think it's important that we grasp that is where our faith comes from.

The Bible, you know, it's not just a promise, it's not just a book full of promises for every day that you can stick onto a calendar and tear one off each day. And, oh, that's a nice thought. You know, it's a thought for the day. That's such a. I mean, it's not bad.

Of course, we can use the Scriptures every day, but to reduce the Bible to just a blessed thought per day seems to be so disrespectful to what the way God has given it to us. That's one thing. But another thing I would say is because I think I'm following the example of both Jesus and Paul.

I mean, when the disciples on the road to Emmaus were distraught because Jesus had gone and they thought he was going to be the one, how did Jesus answer their problem? He didn't say, hey, don't you know who I am? Look at my halo, you know, here I am. No, he took them through the scriptures.

He reorientated their whole biblical understanding to show from the law and the prophets, in other words, from the whole canon of Scripture, that ultimately it is a narrative that leads to him. Similarly, in the second Old Testament lecture of the day up in the upper room.

Oh, by the way, I love the fact that if you ask the question, how did Jesus spend the first day of his resurrection life?

As an Old Testament teacher, it's very nice to be able to say he spent the whole half the day on his resurrection, actually teaching the Scriptures, the Old Testament, all afternoon on the way to Emmaus and all evening with the disciples back in the upper room. But there we read. Luke tells us that he opened their eyes to understand the Scriptures. And he said, this is what is written.

And then he showed from again the law, the prophets, all the canon, that it's fulfilled in him the Messiah, and that repentance is forgiveness, will be preached to the nations. So that's Jesus. And then what about the Apostle Paul?

Well, you know, when he's talking to the elders in the churches of Ephesus in acts Acts chapter 20, I think it is, he says, I didn't hesitate to teach you, to preach to you the whole counsel of God. Now that's a vast phrase which he uses also. Well, that's Luke, of course, recording Paul.

But Paul uses a similar phrase in Ephesians 1, where he says, God has revealed to us the whole counsel, his whole purpose and plan and will of God, which is to bring all things in heaven and earth under Christ into unity.

And so Paul clearly must have taught these Gentile Christians, who probably initially had very little understanding of what we now call the Old Testament, although some of them would have been God fearers, maybe sitting in and the synagogues and so on, but most of them were what we would call completely unscriptured Gentile pagans.

So for Paul to say that he had taught them the whole counsel of God must mean that he was doing a kind of biblical teaching systematically through the Scriptures so that he can say to them, don't you know that if you know, if you're in Christ, you're in Abraham to the Galatians. He keeps echoing back to the Scriptures of the Old Testament all the way through his letters and especially of course in Romans.

And then, you know, when you get to Timothy two, Timothy three, he says all Scripture, and he means the whole Old Testament Scripture is inspired by God and is fruitful.

So I think any way to handle the Bible that doesn't recognize this overall overarching narrative shape is not taking the Bible for all that it's worth. We lose the plot, basically. We forget the story we're in.

I interviewed a missionary, Nick Ripken, on the show and he said that out of all the churches that he's traveled to, and he's a Southern Baptist, so he's traveling mainly to Baptist churches. But he said, I'd say he goes 85% of the sermons that we heard were from Romans to Revelation.

And to me, what happens is when you isolate it to that extent, you actually become very, should I say, spiritually anemic because you miss the full council as you've already alluded to.

If we don't have that full flavor, then we have a tendency to focus on one aspect of Our theological understanding at the exclusion of others, which it actually hurts us in our spiritual diet. We don't have a good understanding or a robust understanding, especially of the new creation. And other things begin to fall off.

We've actually developed a course in Summer Aspect based on your work, where we talk about what happens if you don't get these chapters right, what gets overlooked, what gets missed? The body gets minimalized creation gets minimalized creation. Care obviously gets kicked to the curb.

But before we go any further, I just want to ask for a moment, would you define the mission of God for us before we go on? Because if we don't have that good definition, a robust understanding of it, I think we'll have some errors later.

So I don't want to assume everyone knows what we're talking about, although most would.

Well, when I use the phrase the mission of God, I think I do want to go right back to the very beginning, because I want to distinguish, although not separate, what one might call the creational mission of God and the redemptive mission of God. I mean, it's all the one God, and he's a God of purpose.

But his purpose has had to adapt to if that's the right word, or to take account of human rebellion and sin.

This is one of the damaging things, of course, if you don't have the first two chapters of the Bible and the last two chapters of the Bible in your theology is that you can end up with a Bible which seems to start in Genesis 3 and end in Revelation 20. We all know about sin, and we all know about the day of judgment.

And if you don't get your sin problem sorted out, you're going to be in trouble on the day of judgment. But hallelujah, you've got Jesus, so you can have your sins forgiven and you're safe in the day of judgment. And I believe all of that.

Okay, that is true. But the Bible doesn't begin with sin and end with judgment. It begins with creation and ends with new creation.

And the whole plan of redemption is set within that framework, within those bookends of the Bible.

And in the opening chapters, it's clear that God is a purposeful God with intentions for his creation under his own image, the image of God that is the human race. And that purpose includes Genesis 1, the very beginning chapter, that we should be exercising God's kingly authority within creation.

There's something for us to be doing in creation, in reflecting the kingship of God, to rule, to subdue. And we do that in chapter two. By serving and keeping the creation. So there's a kingship through servanthood or kingly and priestly roles.

Right there at the very beginning is as if God is saying, here's a creation, here's my image, get on with it. You know, I want something good and beautiful to happen in my good creation. And I. And hold that thought for a minute.

But of course we know that we chose to rebel, to disagree, to distrust God's goodness and to collude with some mysterious powers of evil which we don't know where they've come from. They're not from God, they're not from with us. But the serpent represents something that in a sense invades human life and history.

And human beings choose to align themselves with that serpentine evil. And then we end up with all the mess, the curse, sin, punishment, justice, death especially.

And so God, in a sense, through Abraham, and with hints even before that with Noah and even in the Garden of Eden, but specifically with Abraham, God launches what you call a redemptive mission through you and your descendants. I'm going to bring blessing to the whole world of nations. So history becomes, not just, as it were, the journey of fallenness and sin.

It also becomes the footsteps of blessing and redemption, which climax, of course, in Christ and then go right through to the new creation with a redeemed humanity and renewed earth.

So by the mission of God, I'm simply talking about the way in which the Bible reveals to us a God of purposefulness, intentionality, who is about something in the world. But why I said to hold that thought is because God's mission doesn't just end, as it were, when quotes.

We all get to heaven, even though I don't like that phrase, because we might all get to heaven, but we're not going to stay there. Because ultimately God's intention is a new creation in which he will come and dwell with us.

But the story of God's mission, I think, doesn't just end at the parousia, you know, with the end of the story of redemption. I'm not sure if I've got this in my book. I'm not sure that it is there.

But the analogy that I sometimes use for this is imagine a very wealthy landowner, let's say, in, let's say, England, just because I live here. And he.

He has this wonderful big estate of land and he decides to bring in some people who are architects and artists and garden designers and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, because he wants them to develop all of this. He wants them to make it beautiful. He wants it to be a place of fulfillment and joy and happiness, right?

So this great estate, and there's great plans for these people, but sadly, a bunch of people arrive who choose to trash the place. They hold raves, they mess it up, they pollute it, they destroy it, they burn it, it's etc. Etc. Now what is the estate owner going to do?

You can either abandon and walk away and say, I'm out of here. But what he chooses to do is he says, no, I'm going to get back to my original intention.

And with a very long and costly process, he has to overcome these rebels, these invaders. And there's battles, there's people lose their lives, there are court cases. It's an awful problem.

But in the end, he succeeds, in a sense, redeeming his estate from the usurpers. Now what's he going to do? Is he going to sit back and say, okay, that's it, done, finished?

No, he's now going, in a sense, to say, right, now we can really get on with what I wanted in the first place, only even better, because I've got an even better plan for this. And that's why I think that the mission of God is an eternal mission. It doesn't just end at the end of human history.

The book of Revelation is an ending of the canon, but it's a kind of a new beginning, isn't it? Now the dwelling place of God is with man.

And John sees in Revelation 21, he says, the kings of the earth are bringing their wealth and their glory into the city of God. The nations are walking by the light of God.

Things are happening, stuff's going on, work's being done, but it's all now being done in a way which is for the glory of God and the glory of humanity, but purged, redeemed of all sin.

So there's a sense in which that new creation is still going to be a place of purposefulness, of intentionality, of, you know, there'll be things to be done, things to be accomplished. What they may be, don't ask me.

But I do believe that the God of the Bible is the God of eternal mission, within which comes this historical redemptive mission. The story of salvation focused and centered, of course, on the life, death and resurrection of the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Going back for a moment, can you give us the seven chapters of mission? And just you already alluded to how you, you know, how it's been told I actually am going to steal that when I.

When I teach our class on the story of God with the arrows and the different pieces that are there. And I know you have seven chapters, whereas Mike has six. And Mike's coming on the show and we're going to talk actually about the book.

So we're going to probably debate on the validity of the seventh one that you have. I personally, maybe it's my own little numerology, but I like seven more than I like six. Yeah.

Very briefly, these are what we call seven acts of the Bible drama. Thinking of the Bible as a play or a drama with the director as God. A cast of thousands. All the characters in the Bible directed by God.

But at one point, we, as it were, who are initially the spectators because we're watching this drama unfold, we then get invited onto the stage to participate. We become part of the cast. That's the metaphor, really, that's going on. Act one is creation. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

So there's a great beginning to this story. But act two is the fall, the rebellion where we choose to rebel against God.

Act three is basically the rest of the Old Testament because it's where God promises to Abraham that he's going to bless the nations. And then the big question is, how is that going to happen? Paul calls that the mystery. It's a mystery hidden for ages.

The mystery is not what's God going to do? That's not in question. God is going to bless the nations. God is going to bring all nations to participate in his salvation.

That's very clear in the prophets and the Psalms and elsewhere. The mystery is, how is he going to do it? When will it ever happen? So that's Act 3. Then Act 4 is, of course, the Gospel story itself.

That is what we read in the four Gospels. From the conception of Jesus in the womb of Mary right through to his ascension. It's not just his life and death.

It's the whole story of conception, birth, life, teaching, atoning, death on the cross, victorious resurrection and ascension of the right hand of God so that he is now the reigning king. That's very important. And then Act 5 is, you know, from the day of Pentecost, the story of the mission of the church. That's where we are now.

That's where we are participating in the story. Now. At that point, Mike and others would tend to put in the whole big ending.

That is the new creation, Christ comes back, resurrection of the dead, final judgment, new creation.

My thinking is that the final judgment has, in a sense, the right to be regarded as almost a distinct act in the drama in some ways, like the fall, even though it's, you know, just one chapter is a brief, short thing, but it is a it is clearly something that happens that is, you know, pretty catastrophic effects. Similarly, the final judgment is part of the story because it's part of the good news.

Because the good news is that God is not going to let evil and sin and Satan get away with it forever.

There will come a time when God will put all things right and all wrongs, as it were, will be undone, and the consequences of sin and evil will be borne by those who have refused to repent, as it were. So the final judgment is, yes, very bad news if you remain unrestored, unreconciled to God.

But it is very good news when we think about the cosmos as a whole. Because if in the end things were never going to be put right, then we live in a moral chaos. There's no ultimate rectification.

And I rather like that word rectification because I think that's what it means to judge the earth. You know, end of Psalm 96, the whole of creation is rejoicing. Why?

Because God is coming to judge the earth and he will judge the world with righteousness and equity. When God judges, he does what human judges in the Old Testament were supposed to do.

They were to put things right, get things sorted out, decide who's guilty and who's not, and make restitution. The act of judging is a rectifying of a broken situation, if you can, putting things right.

And God says in the end, as Abraham recognized, the judge of all the earth will do what is right. And that, I think, therefore, is what I call Act 6. And then after God puts all things right, he makes all things new.

And so you have the ultimate new creation. So those are to me, the sort of the seven acts of the biblical drama.

And as you say, they're nicely kind of perfect and also means that the cross, Act 4, comes at the center of the story.

Thanks for joining us on today's episode of those who Serve the Lord. I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Chris Wright about his book the Great Story and the Great Commission.

Stay tuned for Part two next week because his insights are a powerful reminder of how understanding the grand narrative of Scripture shapes our mission in the world. Before we go, I want to leave you with three practical action points to consider. Learn the Biblical story.

Take intentional time to familiarize yourself with the overarching narrative of the Bible. From creation to new creation.

Understanding How God's mission unfolds throughout Scripture will actually deepen your faith and clarify your role in his mission. And stay tuned next week as we delve into the different chapters of that story.

Number two Explore Kingdom Living in my book, Kingdom Living in the Modern World, I build on the biblical story to show how our mission today is rooted in the Great Commandments, the Great Community, and the Great Commission, and these three need to be held together. Discover how these truths shape our lives as we seek to love God, love others, and live as a reflection of his kingdom.

And thirdly, live missionally in your daily life. The Great Commission isn't just for missionaries overseas, it's for all of us.

Identify opportunities to to share God's love and truth in your everyday relationships with those who are already on the front row of your life, whether that's in your workplace, your neighborhood, or your greater community. Ask God to open your eyes to those around you who need to experience his grace.

And don't forget, we have exclusive content available just for our watering partners. If you want to dive deeper and access bonus material from today's conversation and more, consider becoming one of our monthly watering partners.

Just click the link in the show notes. Know that you are joining a movement to create resources to help water the faith of Christian leaders around the world. That's it for today.

If this conversation has encouraged you, share it with a friend or leave us a review. It really helps others to find the show. I want to thank our Apollo's Water team for helping make this episode happen.

Until next time, Remember, serve the Lord with gladness and keep your eyes on the great story he's writing. See you soon.

Thank you for joining us on today's episode of those who Serve the Lord, a podcast of Apollo's Watered the Center for Discipleship and Cultural Apologetics. We trust that what you've heard has inspired and encouraged you in your walk of faith. Remember, serving the Lord isn't just about what we do.

It's about who we are becoming in Him. Whether in the small moments or the grand gestures, each step of service brings us closer to his heart.

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Until next time, may you continue to serve the Lord with joy, humility, and a heart full of his love.

God bless you.

This is Travis Michael Fleming signing off. Stay watered, everybody.