In the Beginning
I’ve been encouraging all of us to read the Bible all the way through this year. Cover to cover without skipping any of it. A bunch of us are doing it and using the YouVersion app on our phones—a plan called “Bible in a Year.” I’ve been using the NIVUK audio Bible on the YouVersion app, mostly because I really dig the way the guy reads it—not too much of a dramatic voice, not too fast, not too slow, and a nice British accent. It’s kinda perfect. I know several of you are doing the same one.
I also know that Donna has been gung-ho. The other day she told me that she just got to the part where Aaron, the brother of Moses and the first High Priest of Israel, she just got to the part where he dies. She said it made her sad. That’s pretty sweet. I said, “I don’t want to spoil anything but Moses is gonna die, too. I mean these things happened 4,000 years ago—most of these people have died by now. The good news is Moses shows up again in the Gospels though, so I told her she’ll see him again before the year’s over. There were two people in the Old Testament who didn’t die, though. That’s kinda cool, right?
There’s a lot of really cool, freaky stuff in the Old Testament. It’s strange how much we tend to ignore it. In the New Testament, whenever it talks about the Scriptures, it’s talking about the Old Testament. When Jesus says “you search the Scriptures because in them you think you’ll find eternal life, but the Scriptures are all talking about me.” He’s talking about the Old Testament. He said He’s the fulfillment of all the law and the prophets. All. Jesus is the fullness of the Scriptures. He’s the point of the Scriptures. He said He didn’t come to abolish them but to fulfill them. To hear some Christians talk you’d swear they think He said, He didn’t come to abolish the Old Testament but to abolish it. Which doesn’t make any sense of course.
The New Testament isn’t really the 27 books that we call the New Testament—the New Testament is really Jesus Christ Himself. He’s the Word of God made flesh. He’s the final, ultimate revelation of God to mankind.
The books we call the New Testament are the divinely inspired explanation of what that means. Those 27 books are the divinely inspired commentary on the Old Testament. This is a big difference from the way we usually look at it.
As Christians, we believe in Jesus Christ. He’s the Son of God. He’s the way the truth and the life. He’s the wisdom of God, the righteousness of God, and the image of God. He’s the whole point of everything. We believe in the 27 books of the New Testament because they bear witness to Jesus. We believe in the 39 books of the Old Testament because Jesus said they’re all about Him.
Here’s what that means: if we spend all our time only reading the New Testament, if we aren’t familiar with the Old Testament—then we’re only reading the commentary.
It’s like only listening to interviews of your favorite band but never actually listening to their music.
It’s like only watching the DVD commentaries of what you say is your favorite movie, but you’ve never actually watched the movie.
It’d be like only listening to the punchlines of your favorite jokes.
My favorite comedian, by far, is Mitch Hedberg. But it’d be pretty strange to only pay attention to the punchlines of his jokes.
That’d be like this, “Then the commercial tried to sell slipcovers but I didn’t know what they were.”
Not very funny, right?
Or, “What’s going on down there? Who’s the real hero?”
What? You don’t get it?
Okay, how about this, “I’m just gonna ask where they’re going and hook up with em later.” See, that’s only funny if you know the first part where he says, “You know, I’m sick of following my dreams, man. I’m just gonna ask where they’re going and hook up with em later.”
See, that’s funny, the other ones work better that way, too. “This one commercial said “forget everything you know about slipcovers. So I did. And it was a load off my mind. Then the commercial tried to sell slipcovers but I didn’t know what they were.”
“My belt holds up my pants and my pants have belt loops that hold up the belt. What’s really going on down there, who’s the real hero?” That’s funny to me.
Here’s my favorite Mitch Hedberg joke: he said, “I had a neighbor, and whenever he would knock on my wall I knew he wanted me to turn my music down, and that made me angry because I like loud music, so when he knocked on the wall I’d mess with his head. I’d say: "Go around! I cannot open the wall. I don’t know what you got going on over there, but over here there’s nothing. It’s just flat."
Reading the New Testament without being familiar with the parts of the Old Testament that it’s explaining is a lot like that. We’re not gonna get the joke. It’s gonna be one dimensional. I’m not saying that by reading the New Testament alone you can’t know enough to believe in Jesus and be saved, I’m sure you can, but it’s gonna be kinda flat. It’s gonna be like a joke that’s not really funny. There’s so much more.
That’s why I want us all to read the whole Bible this year.
But when we read the Old Testament, we need to read it as Christians. We’re only interested in the Old Testament because Jesus said it all points to Him. So that’s how we have to read it. Most people, if they do read it, they read it wrong. Dangerously wrong. Instead of reading it as pointing to Jesus they make it all about themselves.
Chad Bird, a really great Old Testament/Hebrew scholar, says most Christians either look at the Old Testament as a desert or a gymnasium. They either see it as this big, dry, wasteland, where there’s no life—except the occasional cool story or Psalm 23. This is the kind of thinking that led people to publish the Bible with just the New Testament, Psalms and maybe Proverbs. They don’t know what to do with the rest so they ignore it. The other way Christians tend to read the Bible—it’s probably the way you were taught to read the Old Testament—is to look at it as a spiritual gymnasium. A place to workout and get your spiritual muscles by trying to be like the Bible heroes we find there. Like some kind of Holy Aesop’s Fables.
In this way of looking at the Scriptures we make them all about us: We have to be like Noah and do whatever crazy thing God tells us to, like build a giant boat on dry land for a flood that no one believes is coming. We have to be like David and step up to slay the giants in our lives. The problem with this way of reading all those stories is it misses the whole point! That’s all. It just dangerously and narcissistically misses the entire point of the Bible. Because the point of all those stories is Jesus. Not you and me. He’s the faithful one who builds the ark. He’s the ark. He’s the good shepherd who slays the giant. He’s the one that all the Scriptures point to, not us.
Let me give you a different example. The basic, most foundational confession of Christianity is this: Jesus Christ is LORD. Right? Jesus Christ is LORD. We’ve all heard that, most of us even believe it.
But without a good familiarity with the Old Testament, we’re not really going to understand much of what it means. It’s a thoroughly Old Testament phrase. Every word of it.
Jesus. Jesus is the Greek version of the Hebrew name “Joshua” or “Yehoshua.” The name means “God saves” or rescues or delivers—but who was Joshua in the Old Testament? What does his name point to? Well, he was the guy who led the people of God over the Jordan River into the promised land. He sent them on a mission to take it from the demonic cultures that were currently occupying it. So who is Jesus? He’s the guy who was baptized in the Jordan river and sent the people of God on a mission to proclaim the kingdom of heaven to a demonic world and culture. He’s the one who leads the people of God into the kingdom of heaven. The true promised land. You don’t get all that unless you know about Joshua.
Christ. Christ is another Greek word, this time it’s for the Hebrew word “Messiah” which means “anointed one.” The Old Testament has all kinds of “messiahs” all kinds of “anointed ones.” Every priest and every king was an anointed one. They are all Christs and they all point to Jesus Christ in one way or another. Jesus Christ is the ultimate anointed one who connects us to God, saves us, and is our king. He’s the priest who offers Himself as the sacrifice, and He’s the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. He rules over heaven and earth as King of kings. We have very little understanding of what any of that means without being familiar with the Old Testament.
But Jesus Christ is also LORD. LORD with all caps. When a person who is familiar with the Old Testament hears the word LORD—they know it’s talking about Adonai. They know this is YAHWEH. This is the God who spoke to Moses from the burning bush and said “I Am Who I Am.” Jesus Christ is LORD means that Jesus is Almighty God. Everywhere in the Old Testament where LORD is in all caps—that’s Yahweh, the personal, covenantal name of God. Jesus Christ is Yahweh.
And that’s just one phrase. The rest of the New Testament is just as rich with Old Testament language and references. Like I said, the New Testament is the divinely inspired commentary on the Old Testament explaining how it all points to Jesus.
If you’re doing the Bible reading plan with us, then by now you’ve surely gotten past the first three chapters of Genesis. I’m going to spend these Sundays of Lent, leading up to Easter, looking at these first three chapters. Luther said, in his commentary on Genesis, that everything about Jesus and the Gospel can be found in the first three chapters. I’m gonna show you what he means. In fact, we’re gonna see that we can find Christ in the first three words.
In the beginning. In Hebrew that’s just one word. B-ray-sheeth — רֵאשִׁית — In the beginning. This is certainly the temporal beginning of reality and time and space, creation. But it’s more than that. We read the Old Testament as Christians—we read it through the lens of the New Testament. So what does the New Testament say about this verse? Well, let’s look at that divinely inspired commentary and find out...
In the Gospel of John chapter one it says this: In the beginning was the Word. That’s supposed to remind us of the first line of Genesis. It’s a direct quote from the Greek Old Testament, called the Septuagint. It’s pretty common for the New Testament, which was written in Greek, to quote from the Septuagint. So the Septuagint starts: En arche´, In the beginning. John says “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.” This is definitely telling us something about creation and Jesus.
But what does it mean? Well, Proverbs chapter eight is another passage with similar creation language. Also, in the same way that John 1 personifies the Word of God, Proverbs 8 personifies wisdom. Listen to this starting at verse 22: This is Wisdom talking:
“The LORD possessed me at the beginning of his work,
the first of his acts of old.
Ages ago I was set up,
at the first, before the beginning of the earth.
And it goes on to describe the creation of land and sky and sea just like Genesis. But it’s personal, personified, it’s Wisdom talking and says the LORD possessed me at the beginning of His work.
So who is the wisdom of the LORD?
Well, back to our divinely inspired commentary: in 1st Corinthians 1:24, Paul says that Christ is
“the power of God and the wisdom of God.”
In Colossians chapter one he says
“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth.” (1:15-16)
So we put all this together and here’s how a Christian reads the first line of Genesis:
In Christ God created the heavens and the earth.
Is your mind blown yet? Mine is. Jesus said the Scriptures, the Old Testament points to Him and we can’t even get past the first sentence without finding Him.
But we’ll never see Him if we don’t repent of our moralistic way of reading the Old Testament so that it’s all about us. It’s not about us. It’s not about you, it’s not about what you do or what you don’t do. It all points to what Jesus Christ has done for you.
What difference does that make? It makes all the difference in the world. If we stop reading the Bible as a list of things we have to do or not do so that God will love us, so that we can be good—then maybe we could stop being the most judgmental people on earth. Maybe churches could start being known for what we’re supposed to be known for: they’ll know we are Christians by our love. We’ll start being known as a safe place for sinners. Let that sink in: a safe place for sinners. A place where their sins will be forgiven. A place where they’re sure to receive grace and mercy and kindness. I know that doesn’t sound much like the churches most of us are familiar with, but that’s supposed to be the whole point.
We’ve got to stop judging people. Jesus said He didn’t come to condemn the world but to save it. Even when they were nailing Him to the cross He said “forgive them Father they don’t know what they’re doing.” I’m pretty sure they knew they were nailing a man to a cross. I’m pretty sure they know that wasn’t a very nice thing to do. But Jesus wanted God to forgive them. To not hold it against them. To not judge them for the very thing they were still actively doing to him.
Makes Romans 5:8 really come alive when it says
“but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
So we’ve got to stop being judgmental. We have to at least try. There’s all kinds of things we don’t like. All kinds of things that we know God doesn’t like. People who have different political views than we do, who think differently about sex and gender and drugs and murder—I’m talking about the worst things we can imagine. Things we know are unholy and ungodly—things we know are sins. We’re supposed to have the same attitude toward these sinners that Jesus would have. Do you really think that any of the sins you hate so much are worse than torturing and crucifying the Son of God?
Forgive them Father, they know not what they do.
What are we supposed to do instead of judging them and pointing out their sin and trying to make them feel guilty? We’re just supposed to tell everyone that God loves them. That’s why He sent his Son into the world. Even for the people we don’t like. The ones we disagree with. The ones who don’t like us. The ones who inconvenience us. Even for the people who hurt us and disappoint us. Jesus even came for them. He even came for us, too.
This is what it means to worship God and love people.
We’re supposed to tell everyone that Jesus died so they don’t have to be marked by their sin. They don’t have to be labeled by their sin. They don’t have to suffer the eternal consequences of all those shameful things they’ve done. Even us. You don’t have to be marked by your sin or hold on to the shame of what you’ve done either, because you are forgiven. You will not suffer the eternal consequences for your sin. You will not reap what you have sown. Christ did it for you.
We’re not just supposed to tell everyone that Jesus died, we’re also supposed to tell everyone that He’s alive again. Tell them they have the hope of eternal life. Death is not the end. Death will not be the end of you.
I hope this gets you as excited as it does me. It all points to Jesus. Reading through the Bible verse by verse has me excited about these things again. As we read through the Old and New Testament this year—the whole Bible—try to remember that every part of it points to Jesus and what He’s done for us. The promises He made to us—His people. In Christ, God is re-creating the heavens and earth. In Christ, God is re-creating you. It all points to Jesus. Jesus Christ is LORD. Thanks be to God. AMEN