9. Beginner Bible Course: The BIG PICTURE of the Bible -- the metastory

EPISODE 9  The simple Bible overview of…WHAT IS THE BIG PICTURE OF THE BIBLE?

Do any of you like jigsaw puzzles? Have I got a deal for you? 1000 piece premium puzzles for only 50 cents a piece? You say what's the catch. There is one small defect. The manufacturer forgot to print a picture on the cover of each box. You say, how could anybody put together a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle with no PICTURE to guide them to a child? I wanted to ask how could anyone think of opening up the box, called the Bible and trying to put together it's 80,000 verses with no PICTURE to guide them when it be easier with each piece within the Bible.

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00:00:47

If you could look at the big picture to know how it might fit, wouldn't that make interpreting that little piece easier? Here's the problem. You can't no, the big picture until you've read the Bible and get the big picture. Most of my students coming into class have seen pieces of this puzzle here and they're in Sunday school class, but for us, you know, the big picture. So I give them a little nudge with this story. A little girl grew up in a Harbor town and from the time she was very tiny, fell in love with a beautiful mastered sailing ships that sailed into the Harbor. When she could draw, she began to sketch some of these beautiful ships and went to a sketchbook was full one day.

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00:01:31

Her daddy said, pick out your favorite ship. I've got a special little surprise for you. It was easy to pick out the one she loved most. She showed it to her daddy and he smiled and said, come, we're going to build the ship in my workshop over months, they labored together in the workshop, producing a perfect replica, the ship, when it was finished, she wondered where they would display it. And her daddy said display it, nothing. It's been built to sale. Take it out in the water and sail it. She waited out into the water with the ship in her arms, set it down on the water. Air-filled the sails. And it sailed majestically to shore.

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00:02:12

She played with that ship all day with gathering crowds, admiring her beautiful ship, but as fate would have it on one of those trips, she went a little too far, stepped into a drop-off and loss control of her ship. The wind's changed immediately and Phil the sales of that ship and blew it out towards SI and she couldn't swim fast enough to catch it. The short tragic story is it's sailed off into the horizon, leaving the little girl heartbroken. She calmed the beach all day, hoping to find it and got up before Dawn the next morning, combing back and forth to find it. But it was last a month or two later, her daddy and her were in a little town down on the shore and she spotted it in a second window running into the shop.

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00:03:01

She said to the shop keeper that that's my ship in the window. You found my ship. Keeper said, miss, that might've been your ship at one time, but a Beachcomber found it. And I paid him a lot of money. So if you want that ship, you're going to have to buy it from me. That little girl went home, emptied her piggy bank ask for her birthday money early, did as many chores as she could until she had enough back in the day, a little Harbor town. She ran into the second hand shop, put the money on the counter and paid for the ship. And as she walked out the door, cradling that ship in her arm, she was overheard to say, in your mind, twice, I made you and I bought you back.

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00:03:45

I placed that little girl holding her ship drawn by one. My students in Murray, as the thumbnail on this podcast, until you've read through the Bible several times. I want you to remember the mind twice a story with the little girl in her ship, because it's a very good illustration of the PICTURE that would be placed on the cover of your Bible. If it were a jigsaw puzzle, how precious that ship was designed, how much that little girl loved it, how it got hopelessly lost and was found again and how it was bought back at a great price to be hers. Once again, that's the meta story of Scripture made and deeply loved hopelessly lost, found, and bought back to be his again for the next few podcasts.

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00:04:35

Imagine with me, the Bible really is a jigsaw puzzle. When you get a jigsaw puzzle, what's the first thing you do to assemble. I bet I know your answer. And we'll talk about how important that is for the Bible in my next word. PICTURE.