Zondervan - The Story. Read the Bible as One Seamless Story from Beginning to End

THE STORY

TEEN EDITION

The Bible as One Continuing Story
of God and His People

Selections from the New International Version

T HIS BOOK TELLS THE GRANDEST, most compelling story of all time: the story of a true God who loves his children, who established for them a way of salvation and provided a route to eternity. Each story in these 31 chapters reveals the God of grace the God who speaks; the God who acts; the God who listens; the God whose love for his people culminated in his sacrifice of Jesus, his only Son, to atone for the sins of humanity.

Whats more: this same God is alive and active today still listening, still acting, still pouring out his grace on us. His grace extends to our daily foibles; our ups, downs, and in-betweens; our moments of questions and fears; and most important, our response to his call on our lives. Hes the same God who forgave Davids failures and rescued Jonah from the dark belly of a fish. This same heavenly Father who shepherded the Israelites through the wilderness desires to shepherd us through our wanderings, to help us get past our failures and rescue us for eternity.

Its our prayer that these stories will encourage you to listen for Gods call on your life, as he helps write your own story.

M AX L UCADO and R ANDY F RAZEE

T HE S TORY, THROUGH ITS UNIQUE and easy-to-read format, opens a door to Gods truth. Its a door that every person is consciously or unconsciously searching for. A door that leads to freedom, hope and God himself! The Bible is filled with exciting and intense stories of love, war, birth, death and miracles. Theres poetry, culture, history and theology. Its a suspense novel, a book of sociology, a history lesson all woven around one eternal conflict: good versus evil. This story offers a glimpse of people in a different time and place who are yet very much like us today.

As you read The Story you will encounter not only the story of humankind but also the story of who God is and what he has done for us for you. This story makes the insistent claim that a loving God has sought you and provided a way of redemption a way for you to enter a relationship with him.

The Story includes the actual, God-breathed words of the Bible. The 31 chapters that comprise The Story contain portions of Scripture that were thoughtfully and carefully excerpted and then placed in chronological order. Transitions, which appear in italic, were written to summarize omitted Scripture text in order to help the storyline read smoothly. The texts were chosen to retain the overall flow of the narrative, so that when you read this story, you will get a sense of the big picture of the Bible. Line spaces were added when text was omitted, and a chart at the back of this book will let you know what portions of Scripture were included.

Other helpful material placed at the end of The Story include an epilogue that gives you an idea of the global impact this story has had on the world, a discussion guide with questions for you to reflect on personally or with a group and a cast of characters with brief descriptions so that you can tell whos who at a glance.

The Scripture text used in The Story is taken from the New International Version (NIV). Our goal was to make the Bible read smoothly and easily, so that you can read it just like youd read a novel. But The Story youre reading isnt any ordinary story. You are reading a story that has the power to change who you are, what you think and how you view life. You are exposing yourself to deep, transforming truth.

So sit back and enjoy the truest, greatest story ever written.

Zondervan gratefully acknowledges the inspiration for this diagrammatic representation of the Bible storyline in Gospel and Kingdom by Graeme Goldsworthy.

God makes the world and hands it over to Adam and Eve, the very first humans. Their new home, the garden of Eden, is paradise. They enjoy incredible freedom with just one rule to follow. But Adam and Eve break that rule and get themselves kicked out of the garden.

Things go downhill from there, until God starts over with Noah the only good guy left in a seriously messed-up world

I N THE BEGINNING God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

And God said, Let there be light, and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light day, and the darkness he called night. And there was evening, and there was morning the first day.

And God said, Let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from water. So God made the vault and separated the water under the vault from the water above it. And it was so. God called the vault sky. And there was evening, and there was morning the second day.

And God said, Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear. And it was so. God called the dry ground land, and the gathered waters he called seas. And God saw that it was good.

Then God said, Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds. And it was so. The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening, and there was morning the third day.

And God said, Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark sacred times, and days and years, and let them be lights in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth. And it was so. God made two great lights the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. God set them in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth, to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening, and there was morning the fourth day.

And God said, Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the vault of the sky. So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living thing with which the water teems and that moves about in it, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. God blessed them and said, Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth. And there was evening, and there was morning the fifth day.

And God said, Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: the livestock, the creatures that move along the ground, and the wild animals, each according to its kind. And it was so. God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.

Then God said, Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.

So God created mankind in his own image,