Angie Smith - Woven: Understanding the Bible as One Seamless Story

Copyright 2021 by Angie Smith Ministries, LLC

All rights reserved.

Printed in the United States of America

978-1-4627-9660-1

Published by B&H Publishing Group

Nashville, Tennessee

Dewey Decimal Classification: 220.07

Subject Heading: BIBLESTUDY AND TEACHING / BIBLECHRONOLOGY / BIBLEREADING

Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture is taken from English Standard Version. ESV Text Edition: 2016. Copyright 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

Also used: Scripture quotations marked csb have been taken from the Christian Standard Bible, Copyright 2017 by Holman Bible Publishers. Used by permission. Christian Standard Bible and CSB are federally registered trademarks of Holman Bible Publishers.

Also used: Scripture quotations marked niv are taken from New International Version, NIV Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Also used: Scripture quotations marked kjv are taken from the King James Version, public domain.

Cover design by B&H Publishing Group. Macram by Karele Bellavance/BohoMontreal. Cover photo by Randy Hughes. Brick texture by Nataliya Sdobnikova/shutterstock. Interior images of Tabernacle of Moses and Ark of Covenant Maryna Kriuchenko | Dreamstime.com. Author photo by Abby Smith.

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For Jenn, who decided to follow Jesus and taught me more than I will ever be able to teach anyone else. J, youre everything your big sister wants to be, and I love you more than youll ever know.

Introduction

The Bible.

Holy Bible.

All those pages.

Such thin, thin pages.

For many years of my life, thats kind of all the Bible seemed to be to me. To be honest, I didnt give it a ton of thought for the majority of that time. I wasnt raised in a Christian home, and I never had a desire to learn more about Scripture. I knew enough to know the Bible was important, of courseknew it was certainly important to all those grandmas and good girls and other Jesus-people who carried it with them so faithfully to church each week.

I have vivid memories of the sweet family who took me to church with them for several Sundays. I remember the pews and the holy silence there. It was intriguing to me because I did feel something that I couldnt quite put into words. I think there are a million ways a person can feel a tug toward faith and not know what to do with it.

I also went because I loved the smell of the leather in their Volvo and the sound of Bach blasting around me.

But I could never understand those crisp, crinkly Bible pages. They taunted me. Taunting tissue. Thats what the Bible felt like.

And I hated that. Because Im a pretty bright person. I tend to pick up on things fairly quickly, can usually get my mind wrapped around stuffeven complicated stuffif Im curious enough about it and committed enough to figuring it out. But the Bible was just different. I couldnt make any sense of it. Even after I really wanted to make sense of it. It was frustrating.

What Ive found out in the years since, however, is that... here, Ill whisper it to you: we all kind of feel that way, dont we?

If you said no, Im going to go ahead and ask you to look for something else to read, because I dont think youre being honest with me. We all struggle to understand the Bible. You know we do.

Thats because the Bible is unlike any other book in all the world. Part of the reason for thisand we wouldnt know it simply by looking at itis that the Bible is not just a book. Its a library of books. Its made up of historical accounts and spiritual instruction and handwritten letters andjust some outright beautiful writingprophecy, poetry, praise songs, personal conversations. Each book of the Bible gives us deeper, additional insights into what God was saying or doing with his people during specific points along the time line. And while a lot of it does read like a continuously running narrative, with page after page of an ongoing story arc that you can track and trace and follow along with, other parts of it are there for different reasons than that.

Some of the books, for instance, like Ruth and Esther, break off to tell a single, isolated story. Others, like the books of Old Testament prophecy or the letters of Paul, sort of telescope outward from parts of the story that are told elsewhere.

[Side note to you: if youve never heard of Ruth or the Old Testament or Paul or anything else you just read, I am SO EXCITED youre here. Youre going to look back to this page when youre done and say with a laugh, Who doesnt know the background story of Paul and why its such a spectacular example of the gospel? Promise.]

One particular book, in factthe book of Jobwhich appears near the middle of the Bible (pronounced JOBE, not JOB), dates all the way back toward the beginning, more like where Genesis is. Yes, you read that correctly.

So, I may as well break the news to you now in case you need some time to process it.

The books of the Bible are not entirely in order.

I know. It complicates things. When youre reading, you cant always assume the next book is automatically the next thing that happened chronologically.

The reason I mention it up front here is only because if youve ever felt as overwhelmed as I did when I first tried piecing the Bible together... dont. Who is up to the task of reading a sixty-six-volume set (of anything!) and keeping up with all the information, all the characters lives, getting all the details down right, and synthesizing it perfectly? Without any help?

And yet even as a collection of more than five dozen books featuring various types of literature, written by forty authors spanning sixteen hundred years, this Book is actuallydrumroll!the telling of one single story . We will see Jesus woven (yes, intended) throughout every single bit of it. And thats the part some people have missed about the Bible and about him . (I know I had.) He shows up in places we never knew to look.

The Bible has the distinct honor of being the only book that is alive. Sounds strange, I know, but its true. It is active. It pierces us. In case you want to double-check me, thats what the Bible actually says about itself. Youll find it in the book of Hebrews. Which is also not exactly placed in the right order chronolo...

Too soon?

Dont panic.

The only important thing to remember right nowand I promise were going to keep it this simple all the way throughis that God is the one whos telling this story. Hes the one who wrote this story. Hes the one who started living this story and who chose to put it into words for us so that we could hear it straight from his mouth, and could keep hearing it, over and over and over and over again.

But we dont want to miss the bigger picture, and the only way we can see it is to pull back the lens.

You may not know one single piece of Scripture. Thats okay. Youre welcome to hang out here, and I give you my word youre going to be impressed with yourself as you read. Or maybe youve written a dissertation on the different viewpoints of the rapture and youve memorized three-quarters of the Bible. I hope you get something out of this book as well, even if its just an appreciation for the fonts and the cool maps. Everyone loves the maps (or learns to).