I’ve never written a book review before, so may get it wrong this time (please bear with me); but this book was the most fantastic, mind-boggling, God’s-glory-displaying one I read last year. And because it fits snugly with our last PP session (The Bible Story), I thought to introduce book to you, encourage you to read it, and maybe knock yourself out revelling in God’s glory splattered magnificently across all the pages of Scripture.

Firstly, why is the bible story the greatest story ever told? Because the story is genuinely amazing, beautiful, triumphant, often-heartbreaking but always glorious, answers Andrew Wilson. He goes on to explain that seeing the bible as one big story (“the GodStories”) will increase our enjoyment of theology (story-telling and story-listening are generally enjoyable activities); highlighting the central story of God’s sovereignty, Christ’s cross, His coming kingdom from different acts of the same story, gives us multiple starting points to present the gospel to others; and the main story becomes even more significant as we observe its impact on all the others (which answers my silly question about if it was altogether necessary to go through Abraham, David, Exile to get to Jesus Christ).

Three additional impacts of exploring the entirety of GodStories on us:

The Glory of God is magnified, expanded as we see and savour it in many stories of the bible: from the creative beauty of God at Creation, to His unimaginable power in Exodus, to His just justice in Joshua, to His immeasurable love at Calvary, to His eternal victory in Revelation, etc. “To grasp more of the glory of God, we need to appreciate the range and the depth of the gospel by studying as many of its components as possible. More than anything else, the reason for writing a book full of GodStories is to remind us how astonishing and faithful and glorious and worthy of worship is the God who wrote them.”

Our sense of mission is encouraged. The Gospel (GodStories) is the power of God to Salvation. People need to hear the good news, and exploring GodStories fires us up to take the message to them.

Exploring GodStories nourishes the health of the church, as we continue to find new and renewed aspects of GodStories to encourage and nourish and grow us as a community of believers.

Following the outline above, the main text does good justice to the book’s intent. Each chapter (written in a stand-alone style) deals with a similar aspect as Geoff’s material but fleshed out with a bit more details; OT and NT texts are explained, their connections highlighted, and conclusions presented that bears out how the section under treatment ties to the global intent of the book. The general flow is conveniently interspersed with break-materials (poems, hymns, scripture verses, memorable quotes, etc) that encourage readers to pause, pray, reflect, worship or study. The final chapter (“the Gospel of God”) literally traces out the common Hero in all of GodStories – God: Adam’s template, the serpent’s nemesis, Abraham’s shield and great reward, Moses’ salvation, Pharaoh’s nightmare, the commander of the army of Yahweh, David’s rock, Solomon’s wisdom, Nehemiah’s confidence, Esther’s rescue, Zechariah’s conquering King, Jesus Christ, Nicodemus’ answer, Lazarus’ life, Sin’s defeater, Death’s killer, the Holy Spirit, Peter’s courage, John’s faith, Stephen’s conviction, Philip’s evangelism, Paul’s conversion, and so on. “The whole Bible is about God. It is full of stories in which He is the main character, the climax, the resolution and indeed the author.”

The material is presented in five main sections (“Acts”), each comprising 8 to 12 stand-alone chapters of no longer than 4 pages each, making it easy to read in short, periodic bursts. Some subjects, due to their implicit complexity and the self-imposed page-limit, are not discussed in sufficient details. Otherwise, it is a fantastic book that displays the gospel of God in such a way that God’s glory is seen and savoured.

GodStoriesOnline

Seun Olowojebutu