It’s All About Jesus

Something that would be so helpful for us would be to recover the awe and wonder of holding the Bible in our hands. It brings life and ends death.

Recap:

• It's not ink on a page, it's breath on a page. All Scripture is God-breathed.

• It's one story, it covers millennia, but it's one story in 6 acts. Jesus creates and restores everything.

Scripture is the story of Jesus. God has a face in the way he revealed Himself to us through the person of His Son, Jesus Christ. God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. He is One God with three distinct persons in the triune God. Jesus is the revelation, the face, the way we know God. He was and is and is to come. He's not subject to change. Our story centers on the greatest person who ever was. He's the source of light and life, and is the author of all things. He's in the pages of the Holy Scripture.

The Bible is not a collection of principles to help me live my life, it's the unfolding of a person.

How Jesus is the central character in each act:

1. Beginning. Genesis 1:1- God created the world. A person was guiding the process of creation. We learn in Hebrews 1:1-12 that Jesus made the universe. In Colossians 1:16 it says that all things are made by Him and for Him. Jesus is in the beginning because He's the means by which everything was created. The Savior that was hanging on the Cross is the Creator who hung the stars.

2. Revolt. We did everything our own way. Jesus was in the Garden when Adam and Eve were naked and unashamed. He had mercy on them after the fall and killed an animal to cover their shame and nakedness. It was the beginning of an already-in-motion plane where Jesus would be the final covering of all the guilt and shame of the world by His death on the Cross.

3. People. Everything was chaos and people forsook God and started worshiping idols. God chose a people for Himself that would bless the world. They were up and down in their commitment to God. The picture of Jesus is most clearly seen in Abraham with his son, Isaac. At the moment he was about to sacrifice his son, God provided a ram for the sacrifice. He was showing Abraham a bigger story that He will always be Jehovah Jireh, our God who provides. God will provide Jesus as the sacrifice for us.

4. Savior. His name is Jesus because He will save us from our sins. Recall the parallel in Hosea whose name means "way of salvation." Hosea went after his prostitute wife and redeemed her. Jesus comes after us and redeemed us on the Cross.

5. Church. Jesus builds the Church. He calls us His Bride and His Body. We are His people.

6. Forever. The future is the present on steroids x a billion, but perfect. But the best part about it is that Jesus is there and He's throwing a party. It's the consummation of this longing in our hearts to be reunited with Jesus and actually being with Him.

It's not just a story about Jesus; Jesus is the Living Word of God.

John 1 starts us at a 50,000-foot view so we can understand the magnitude of who Jesus is.

• John 1:1. In the beginning was the Word, the logos, the summary statement. The Word was with God and the Word was God.

• John 1:2. This points to the Trinity.

• John 1:3-5. In the beginning of both Genesis and John, God creates light and He is the light and life of man. But when Jesus came, darkness would not overcome like it had before.

• John 1:14. There was always Jesus before any of us were even in the story. When Jesus came, the angels weren't singing as a birth announcement, they were singing because the summation of God was in a manger on earth.

We were made by Jesus and for Jesus. Everything we know about Jesus we know because of the breath on the page that we hold. There's not one thing you know about Jesus that you didn't find in Scripture. Without the Scripture, we don't know God. See Hebrews 1:2.

History is His Story. You're alive and you're in it.