The Bible Is Not About You!Uddrag

The Right Message of the Bible

The Bible was written over a period of about 1,400 years, in three languages, set in multiple locations, employing several genres, and telling hundreds of stories. But as we saw yesterday, the Bible has one main character: God. All Scripture points to Jesus. Jesus—not verses, commands, and stories—is the power to enliven hearts, revive lives, and restore brokenness.

Jesus himself tells us what the true message of the Bible is — the one that helps the Bible snap into focus and unlocks the door to God’s true message and its implication for our lives — in a rebuke from to the religious leaders of His day. “God’s voice you have never heard,” Jesus says:

“His form you have never seen, and you do not have his word abiding in you, for you do not believe the one whom he has sent. You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life” (John 5:37–40).

Essentially, Jesus says that even the most religious people of His day read the Bible through the wrong lens. These were religious leaders, whose role was to represent God to the rest of God’s people; to teach God’s word and ways. But Jesus’ claim was that they never actually heard the voice of God. So, though they were earnest and religious, they missed the point! These leaders spent hours studying their scrolls—but for all the time they stared at the words, Jesus says they never saw the greatest truth those words point to: Himself, the Messiah, the One God sent to fulfill each of His promises.

It is both shocking and common how much these first-century leaders’ issues still pervade today’s religious leaders, churches, and everyday followers of Jesus. If we truly understood God’s promises, we would recognize Jesus as the fulfillment of each one. If we grasp the words of the prophets, we’d see Jesus as the culmination of all prophecy. If the words of Scripture shone a light on our own hearts, we would realize the hypocrisy and brokenness of their own life in contrast to Jesus’ perfection. And for all our yearning for a Messiah, we would recognize Jesus as the “one [God] sent.”

The sobering (terrifying?) conclusion in Jesus’ rebuke is that the leaders wrongly “search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life”. Do we do the same, as we look to the Bible for recommendations and fixes, and hope that it’s convicting enough to lead us to change ourselves?

The words of the Bible—as helpful and vital as they are for followers of Jesus—are not themselves the source of life. Other, life is found in Jesus! By His exemplary life, sacrificial death, miraculous resurrection, and kingdom reign, Jesus offers us true, full life, both today and for eternity. That’s the gospel. That’s the message of the Bible. That’s the “good news” that changes every aspect of life, but that we often miss when we read the Bible.

Every Bible story’s human hero was imperfect—but each reflects some attributes of Jesus, who alone is perfect. Every command of the Bible similarly reflects a standard that Jesus alone meets. And as we’ve said, the whole Bible (and every verse in it), points to Jesus. In this, Jesus is the perfect example the whole Bible points us to. And Jesus is more: by His Spirit, He is the very source of strength and power for any true and lasting fruit, any heart change, any reconciliation, and any obedience in aspects of our own faith, lives, and relationships. Both at the beginning of our Christian walk and in some area of our lives every single day, Jesus is our true hero and Redeemer.

To learn to see Jesus as the hero and Redeemer, we need to get in the habit of asking a question, which we’ll explore more tomorrow but which is also helpful to close with today: How does every passage of the Bible point to Jesus?

Questions:

1. How does every verse of the Bible point to Jesus as both hero and redeemer?
2. Why does reading the Bible with that lens matter?