01 | The Christ: An Introduction
There is simply no denying that the Bible is one of the most influential books in human history and a book that has inspired many people throughout history and across the world to do some pretty amazing things — you might think about Mother Teresa caring for the poor or William Wilberforce on the front lines of abolishing the slave trade or even the fact that it’s been Christians who have paved the way for modern science, education and social justice.
But the Bible is also a book that has confused many people, and it can sometimes be a controversial book that is easily misunderstood. Unfortunately, we could name examples of how the Bible has been misused to hurt people as well.
So how does that happen?
Well, maybe one of the biggest reasons why the Bible is misunderstood is because some of us forget or we maybe at times just fail to realize that from cover to cover the Bible is trying to tell us one big epic story. It is telling one story that communicates who God is, who we are, and the wonderful redemptive history that effects all of us.
Sometimes we tend to view the Bible as a book that simply provides a code of conduct that we must implement in our daily lives if we want to stay on God’s “good side”. And even though there’s a little truth in that, the wisdom and instruction contained in the Bible are better understood in the context of the one big story that the Bible is telling.
One Big Story
It’s actually pretty unfortunate to only view the Bible as something that is just meant to reform our behavior through rules, commands and maybe some inspirational sayings. When we do that, we reduce the Bible down to being some sort of religious rulebook which misses the heart of what the Bible is all about.
Listen to how the Biblical scholar, Ray Lubeck, puts it:
“Following the Bible is not about reforming our behaviors by strict rule keeping. Rather, it is an invitation to our imagination, offering to us whole new ways of seeing and being in the world in the ways that God describes it. God does not liberate us in Christ by giving us more and different laws, but by enabling us to look at literally everything from a different perspective, with a new reference point for reality.”
To try and put that another way, the Bible is offering us a new way of life and a new way of viewing the world by inviting us to join in and participate in the one big epic story that it is telling from cover to cover. It’s an invitation to re-imagine life in this world. It is offering us so much more than a new religion or a new system of morals and values; it is inviting us to inhabit the story that it is telling.
So, that being said, what is this one big story that the Bible is telling?
Well… here it is… in the most high-level basic way I can say it…
From cover to cover, the Bible tells us the one big story of how the Creator is rescuing his creation through the Christ.
The Bible traces an unfolding drama that has been taking place through real historical events with real-life human characters playing real roles in this world. It’s not just a collection of stories that give us moral lessons or heroes to emulate.
For those of us who grew up in church or going to Sunday School, you might remember the way that many children’s Bibles portray stories like the story of Samson as if he is some sort of ancient Superman who uses his powers to defeat the bad guys. Or the story of David as if he’s just the brave little boy who teaches us to not be afraid of the big bad giants in our own lives. We can tell these stories that way and some good will come out of it, but they are better told when we realize that these stories and their characters are all part of a greater overarching story that is the epic story of Jesus the Christ.
Even that title, the Christ (or the Messiah in Hebrew), can sometimes be misunderstood and misrepresented when we talk about Jesus and who he is and what he has accomplished — through his incarnation, life, death, resurrection and ascension. Jesus is the eternal Son of God in whom God became human and sacrificed himself to atone for human sin. And this is at the heart of what it means for Jesus to be the Christ, but it also means so much more!
Jesus the Christ
How did Jesus view himself and what did he actually see himself accomplishing?
There’s a story at the end of the Gospel of Luke where Jesus appears to his disciples for the first time after his resurrection from the dead. They are all shocked and frightened to see Jesus alive and standing there right in front of them. Some of them are so troubled by it that they simply can’t believe that what they are seeing is real.
So guess what Jesus does to calm them down and to help them understand what’s going on?
He gathers them together and leads a Bible study.
That’s right… a Bible study.
And not just any Bible study. Jesus leads them in a study of how everything that was written in the Scriptures (what we call the Old Testament) is now being fulfilled in him and what he is accomplishing. Luke records it like this:
Jesus said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” And then Jesus opened their minds to understand the Scriptures (Luke 24:44-45).
Jesus saw himself as the one who came to fulfill the things that the Old Testament story had foreshadowed, and so he saw himself accomplishing something that was picking up where the Old Testament had previously left off.
In other words, Jesus viewed himself and his life and his mission based on everything that had taken place previously throughout the Old Testament storyline. And so, like his first disciples, if we are going to truly understand what it means for Jesus to be the Christ then it would be really helpful to have a good understanding of the storyline that leads up to Jesus in the first place. If we are going to gain a better understanding of the man named Jesus then it would be really helpful to have a better understanding of some of the specially chosen men that preceded him.
Again, this is the type of thing that Jesus did with his disciples to help them make sense of his life, death and resurrection as the Christ. And so, this is something that I want to try and do for you. Like Jesus did with his disciples, I want to take you through the Old Testament and hit on a few key figures that will hopefully help open up our minds to understanding who Jesus is and what he has accomplished. That is the motivation behind this series — a five-part series that I’ve entitled, “The Christ: Foreshadowed and Fulfilled.” In this series, we are going to look at five different human figures from the Old Testament story and see how their stories foreshadow what would eventually be fulfilled by Jesus.
Foreshadowed and Fulfilled
Jesus is the eternal Son of God in whom God became human and sacrificed himself to atone for human sin. But there’s also so much more!
Jesus is also the New Adam who has retaken the throne over creation and who restores us back into being creatures made in the image of God. He is the Son of Abraham who has come to extend God’s blessing beyond Israel to all the nations on the earth. He is the Prophet greater than Moses who has come to deliver a renewed Torah. He is the Son of David who will reign as King over God’s people for ever and ever. And He is the Son of Man who has been given a new kingdom made up of people from all nations that will overcome all the other kingdoms of this world and never be destroyed. And all of these shed light on what it means when the Bible declares Jesus to be the Christ.
Now there’s obviously no way that I’m going to be able to give you some sort of exhaustive account of how all the different stories in the Bible point to the one main story of Jesus. That would take forever and that is beyond my skill set — I’ll leave that for you to explore and discover on your own. But our goal in this series (to use a phrase from the BibleProject) is to give you a deeper appreciation for how the Bible is a unified story that leads to Jesus and to give you a fresh new perspective that leads you to join in and actually participate in what God is doing and has been doing since the beginning of human history.
Essentially, our goal is three-fold. I want to help us gain:
a basic understanding of some Old Testament figures
a better understanding of Jesus as the Christ
a bigger view of our lives and what it really means to be a Christian in this world.
There’s a whole new worldview and way of life that opens up to us when we begin to see the Bible as something that is so much more than just a religious book about personal salvation from a sin problem.
Yes, we are saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. I am in no way trying to minimize that. The Bible proclaims the incredible good news about God’s mercy and grace and love and forgiveness that saves us from sin and that gives us a right standing with God. I agree with that, but here’s what I’m trying to say: This incredible good news of salvation through faith in Jesus becomes even more compelling and more beautiful as we begin to see the bigger picture of how all of that fits under the umbrella of the even bigger story that the Bible is telling.
The Bible is not primarily a book about how to go heaven when we die. The Bible is a book that tells the big story of how the Creator is rescuing his creation through the Christ. May Jesus open up our minds to understand the Scriptures.
And so, as we get ready to start this five-part series, we are going to start on the very first page of the Bible in order to see how this epic story begins. If we are going to truly understand the story of Jesus as the Christ then we need a clear understanding about the story of creation. If we are going to gain a better understanding of the man named Jesus then we need a better understanding of the man named Adam.
