Foundations: What is the Bible All About? 

Ever open the Bible and wonder how all these books, people, promises, battles, poems, and prophecies fit together? If you want to understand the Bible, you need more than isolated verses. You need the big story.

Pastor Kerry Decker of Compass Christian Church online is also a life coach, author, and apologist. Much of his work is centered on helping people navigate life’s challenges and better understand God. To better understand God it's crucial to better understand the Bible. The Bible is not a random collection of religious writings. It is one unified story of how fellowship between God and man was broken by sin and restored by God himself through Jesus Christ.

That single truth helps us better understand the Bible from Genesis to Revelation.

Understand the Bible’s main storyline

The Bible tells the story of creation, fall, redemption, and restoration.

• Creation: God made a perfect world.
• Fall: Adam and Eve disobeyed God, and sin entered the world.
• Redemption: God set in motion His plan to save humanity through Jesus Christ.
• Restoration: God will one day make a new heaven and a new earth, the eternal home of righteousness.

That is the backbone of Scripture. The Bible begins in Genesis with the creation of the heavens and the earth, and it ends in Revelation with a new heaven and new earth. At the beginning of the Bible, sin and death enter the world. At the end, righteousness and eternal life are fully established.

Once you see that arc, you begin to understand the Bible as one great, unfolding message rather than a pile of disconnected parts.

Sin broke what God created

The Old Testament opens with beauty and order. God created a world without sin. But that perfection did not remain untouched for long. When Adam and Eve chose disobedience, corruption entered human experience.

From there, wickedness spread rapidly. Genesis describes a world so morally ruined that human thoughts were continually bent toward evil. That led to divine judgment during the time of Noah, when God sent the flood.

This provides insight which is helpful to understand the Bible because it explains why the world is the way it is. Human pain, moral collapse, injustice, death, and alienation from God are not accidental themes. They are central to the biblical diagnosis of the human condition.

The Bible does not flatter humanity. It tells the truth about us. But it also tells the truth about God’s mercy.

Follow God’s promise through Abraham and Israel

After judgment came promise. God called Abraham and made a staggering commitment to him: through Abraham, all nations would be blessed.

That promise is one of the great turning points in all of Scripture. Abraham believed God, and that faith becomes a model for all who would later trust in the Lord.

From Abraham came a family, then a people. His descendants grew into the nation of Israel. One of his descendants, Joseph, ended up in Egypt, and eventually the whole family relocated there. Over time they multiplied and they were enslaved.

More than 400 years later, God raised up Moses to lead them out of Egypt and bring them toward Canaan, the Promised Land.

In Canaan, Israel experienced both triumph and tragedy. There were seasons of greatness, especially under David and Solomon. But after Solomon, the kingdom split. Moral decline followed. The northern kingdom, Israel, was conquered by Assyria. The southern kingdom, Judah, was later taken into Babylonian captivity for 70 years.

Even after return and rebuilding, the Old Testament closes with unmet expectation. The story is unfinished. The people are back in the land, the temple is rebuilt, but they are still waiting for the Messiah.

If you are trying to understand the Bible, this is crucial: the Old Testament is not just history. It is history moving toward a promise.

Recognize that the Scriptures point to Jesus

In one sense, the answer to what the Bible is all about can be given in one word: Jesus.

The New Testament opens with the arrival of the One the people had been anticipating. Jesus is born of the virgin Mary, grows up in Nazareth, is baptized, begins His ministry, performs mighty works by the power of God, is crucified, rises from the dead, and ascended into heaven.

Before ascending, Jesus commanded His followers to make disciples of all nations. Peter and the apostles helped establish the church in Jerusalem, and Paul, once an opponent of the faith, became one of its greatest messengers across the Roman Empire.

To understand the Bible, you must understand that Jesus is not a side note in the story. He is its center.

The law points to Him. The prophets point to Him. The sacrifices point to Him. The kingdom points to Him. And the promises of God find their fulfillment in Him.

If you want help building a stronger biblical foundation, the Foundations Booklet | Compass Livestream is a useful resource for walking through core Christian truths in an organized way.

Prophecy confirms God’s plan

One of the great assurances Scripture gives us is that when God makes a promise, He fulfills it.

This is one reason fulfilled prophecy matters so much. It helps us understand the Bible as the record of a God who acts in history and keeps His word.

Consider just a few examples:

• Micah 5:2 foretold the Messiah’s birthplace in Bethlehem more than 700 years before Jesus was born.
• Isaiah 7:14 spoke of the virgin birth.
• Isaiah 53 described the sacrificial suffering of Christ in astonishing detail.
• Psalm 22 captured the agony of the cross, including words Jesus would speak and details surrounding His suffering.

Isaiah also points to key features of Christ’s death and victory: His quiet acceptance of suffering, His death among the wicked, His burial with the rich, and His resurrection. David’s psalm even includes the soldiers gambling for His clothing.

These are not scattered coincidences. They are threads woven through the Old Testament to identify Jesus as the Messiah.

The same God who kept those promises will also keep the promises that are still to come, including the promise of eternal life for those who follow Him.

Learn the role of faith from Abraham

To better understand the Bible, pay close attention to how Abraham responded to God.

God took Abram outside and told him to look at the stars. God told him that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars. At that moment Abram did not even have a child. Yet he believed the Lord, and that faith was credited to him as righteousness.

That principle runs from beginning to end. The people who please God are those who trust Him.

Abraham’s faith was not casual optimism. It was confidence in the character and power of God. Even when fulfillment was delayed for years, he did not abandon the promise. He became stronger in faith, persuaded that God could do what He had promised.

The Bible is not only an account to know, but a message to receive personally. The call is not merely to admire Abraham’s faith but to have faith too.

Righteousness comes through Christ

Here is where the message becomes personal.

Our right standing before God does not rest on our own goodness. It rests on Christ. Abraham believed God and was counted righteous. In the same way, those who put their faith in the God who raised Jesus from the dead are declared righteous through Christ.

That does not mean sin does not matter. It means grace is greater. We turn from sin, put our faith in Christ, and commit ourselves to faithful obedience. We live by faith, not by sight.

All Christians know what it is to fall short. But the hope of the gospel is that God's grace has the final word. His power is made perfect in weakness, and there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

Keep first things first

One of the most practical lessons that grows out of this whole message is wonderfully simple: keep first things first, and Jesus Christ is first.

When Christ has first place, everything else starts falling into proper order. Not perfectly. Not instantly. But rightly.

This is where biblical understanding becomes daily living. The purpose is not just to gather information. The purpose is transformation. The doctrines of Scripture are meant to shape the habits, priorities, and direction of life.

Stay connected to God’s Word consistently.

Read the whole Bible with the end in view

The final piece in learning to understand the Bible is remembering where the story ends.

Humanity is not spiraling aimlessly. God is moving everyone and everything toward a promised future. Just as He fulfilled His word in the coming of Christ, He will fulfill His word regarding a new heaven and a new earth.

If you look back and see how faithfully God has acted across generations, it becomes easier to trust Him now. His involvement in history is not a relic of the past. It is the foundation of present hope.

The Bible reveals a God who creates, judges, promises, saves, and restores. He has made himself known in history, and He has made the way of salvation known through Jesus Christ.

That is why this book matters so deeply. It explains the world, exposes the problem of sin, announces the Savior, and points to eternal hope.

To understand the Bible, remember this summary:

• Genesis shows us a good world broken by sin.
• The Old Testament traces God’s covenant promises and the long expectation of the Messiah.
• The Gospels reveal Jesus as the promised Redeemer.
• The rest of the New Testament explains the meaning of Christ’s work and the mission of his church.
• Revelation points to the final restoration of all things.

If you hold onto that framework, you will understand the Bible far more clearly.

The Bible is the greatest story ever told because it is the true story of God’s redeeming work. Learn that story well, and you will not only understand the Bible better but you will understand life better, sin more honestly, Christ more clearly, and God more deeply. For more Foundations videos go to Compass Church Riverside's You Tube playlist.