J. Scott Duvall - Living Gods Word: Discovering Our Place in the Great Story of Scripture

We are both college professors who also serve as teachers in the local church. For many years at our school (Ouachita Baptist University in Arkansas) we taught Old Testament Survey and New Testament Survey to all students. We realized somewhere along the way that we were failing our students in two primary ways. First, we were failing to teach our students how the whole Bible fits together. They were hearing about all the parts of the Bible but were never really seeing how it all comes together to form a single story. That couldnt be a good thing. Second, our students were not learning how to read the Story for themselves. Please dont misunderstand; Old and New Testament Survey have their place (upper-level college or seminary most likely), but we became convinced that they shouldnt take priority over learning the Story and learning how to read the Story well.

As a result, we changed from the two traditional courses to Survey of the Bible and Interpreting the Bible. We would make two passes through the Bible: once to explain the Great Story and a second time to explain how to interpret the Story responsibly. We also began creating resources for those courses. For the Interpreting the Bible class, we wrote Grasping Gods Word: A Hands-On Approach to Reading, Interpreting, and Applying the Bible (Zondervan, 1998). The second edition came out in 2005 and the third edition in 2012. Because Grasping Gods Word has been so well received, Zondervan approached us about writing a complementary book that would survey the Great Story of Scripture. And so Living Gods Word: Discovering Our Place in the Great Story of Scripture was born.

In terms of organization, Living Gods Word follows the biblical story in a fairly straightforward manner, using C sounds as a pedagogical aid for students: Creation and Crisis, Covenant, Calling Out, Commandments, Conquest and Canaanization, Creation of the Kingdom, Communion and Common Sense, Crumbling of the Kingdom, Captivity and Coming Home, Christ, Church, and Consummation. The introduction provides a quick glance at the Great Story, while the conclusion reviews the Story with a special emphasis on how it all fits together theologically. We also added a brief chapter to help students understand the period of time between the Old and New Testaments.

Each chapter includes the following:

• Enter Here a story or illustration to introduce the topic of the chapter
• Be Prepared reading or listening assignments (see comments in the following section)
• The Story Continues an overview of the content of this part of the Story
• Making Connections to show how this part of the Story relates to the whole Story
• Living the Story to present ideas about how to live out this aspect of the Story
• Wrapping Up a summary of the chapter
• Memory Verse a Bible verse that gives the chapter in a nutshell
• Digging Deeper recommended books and assignments

Living Gods Word is a guide to help you understand and live out the Great Story of the Bible. The subtle danger is that studying a book like this one might actually keep you from reading and studying the Bible itself, and that would be a tragedy. Above all, we want to encourage you to read or listen to the Bible.

The Be Prepared section presents key chapters of the Bible for you to take in. If you prefer a traditional book with pages you can flip and words you can underline and margins you can write in, great! If you prefer listening to the Bible, however, dont feel like youre a second-class Christian. In fact, people were listening to the Bible being read aloud long before they had a private copy to read silently to themselves. In the ancient world people read aloud or listened as others read aloud. By some estimates, only about 15 percent of the general populace in the first century was literate, although that percentage was probably higher among Jews and Jewish Christians since they treasured the Scriptures and taught their children to read (e.g., 2 Tim. 3:15).

Building on its Jewish heritage where the Scriptures were read every week in the synagogue, the early church placed a premium on knowing and memorizing the Scriptures. For instance, the apostle Paul refers to the common practice of having his letters read aloud (Col. 4:16; 1 Thess. 5:27) and encourages Timothy (and the church in Ephesus) to devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture (1 Tim. 4:13; cf. Luke 4:16; Acts 13:14 16). In Revelation 1:3, a blessing is pronounced on the person who reads the prophecy aloud and on those who listen: Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear it and take to heart what is written in it, because the time is near. There is also an interesting but strong connection in the Bible between hearing Gods Word and obeying Gods Word (e.g., Matt. 7:24 27; John 14:23 24; Rev. 1:3; 3:3).

All this means that its perfectly fine to listen to the Bible being read aloud. You could get an audio Bible of a dramatic reading of Scripture such as The Bible Experience and listen to this. Or you could download a Bible app like YouVersion for your phone or tablet or laptop and listen to the Bible that way. Whatever approach you take, we strongly encourage you to read or listen to Gods Word as a way of preparing to understand and live out its message.