Do You Believe the Story?

Storytelling is an art that is truly captivating when it’s done well. It’s also one of the best ways to share facts about an event. People constantly tell stories to share feelings, in part instructions, even to warn of dangers. So, it shouldn’t surprise us that our Heavenly Father, the one in whom we are created in His image, chose to share the story of salvation primarily through a narrative story.

A narrative or story is a report of connected events, real or imaginary, presented in some kind of sequence in written or spoken words, or even in pictures. In the Bible, the connected events all point to the Messiah, the promise of God for salvation. Therefore, Genesis 3 – “the fall of man” becomes the narrative hook, that event that reveals the point of the story. Every other story up to the resurrection of the Messiah, Jesus Christ, is the rising action. All of this points to the “Why” in the story being told. Once the Messiah showed up, the Bible was nearing the climax. His life helped tell the story of God’s power, His compassion, basically, His heart. But good storytelling often utilizes the plot twist, which is a literary technique introducing a radical change in the expected outcome of the plot.

In the case of the Bible, the Messiah wasn’t going to become an earthly king in Jerusalem the way the Apostles and His other followers thought he would. Throughout the gospel of Mark, Jesus wants them to see and hear what the Messiah would do to redeem God’s children. Repeatedly, He tells them that He was going to have to die to deliver salvation. But every group didn’t get it. The followers were perhaps too close emotionally to see it, the Pharisees and religious leaders were too focused politically to see it, but it was those who were desperate, sick, blind, and weak who seemed to see and hear it more clearly.

From Mark 6 to Mark 10, we see a pattern being formed that helps us to see who recognized Jesus as God’s promised one. Consider how Jesus’ hometown friends and family rejected Him (Mark 6), or how King Herod didn’t want to hear God’s message from John (Mark 6). Or how the Pharisees were unwilling to see Jesus’ miracles as proof of His deity (Mark 8). Instead, the ones who could see, understand, and believe were people like the Syrophoenician woman (Mark 7), the deaf man in Decapolis (Mark 7), and the blind man in Bethsaida (Mark 8). It was people like blind Bartimaeus that had faith enough to proclaim, “Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me!” (Mark 10:47). They could see and hear the good news message that was woven into the actions of Jesus and believe.

Each of these miracles: feeding 5,000 and 4,000, walking on water, calming the storm, healings, and the Transfiguration, were all to help them, and us, to have faith in God’s ability to redeem us. It took them longer to see and to hear God’s purpose, but they too eventually believed. Peter exclaimed what each of us must also exclaim, “You are the Messiah, the Christ, the Promised One of God!” (Mark 8:29). Do you believe He came to live, die, and rise again, so that we could be redeemed when we trust in Him? That is the question you must answer.