Leading to Jesus

From beginning to end, the Bible is a revelation of the one true God to all mankind.  The Old Testament is a grand epic that foretells the promised Messiah revealed as Jesus in the New Testament, and Jesus Christ is the central figure throughout all Scripture.  Genesis 1:1 says, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."  The beginning of the Gospel of John says in John 1:1-3:  "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ² He was in the beginning with God. ³ All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made."  John establishes straight away the divine nature and power of Jesus Christ, that Jesus the Word spoke all things into existence as part of the eternal and supreme Godhead.  The whole Bible is written to lead us to know Jesus Christ as KING OF KINGS and our Saviour.

Observing Jesus is the primary and central figure in the Bible helps us better understand the structure of the Scripture.  During a previous study of the book of Genesis, it was impressed upon me how the Bible puts laser focus towards Jesus by highlighting people in His ancestral line.  While the Bible provides detailed genealogies, many of those names are not followed over successive generations.  People like Cain, Ishmael and Esau are mentioned along with their sons, but we do not follow the stories of their lives because they do not lead to Jesus.  The Bible focuses on people in the direct line of Jesus like Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David and Zerubbabel, and the human chains to the mother of Jesus Mary and (as was supposed) His father Joseph can be read in Luke 3 and Matthew 1.

While the Bible tells us a lot about various people--especially in Messianic line of Christ--it does not tell us everything that transpired, the mundane conversations or activies, or detail every time God spoke to people.  The Bible does not record every miracle or sermon of Jesus either.  In the Old Testament, for instance, there are large gaps of time between mentions of God speaking to Abraham.  It does not mean Abraham did not hear or converse with God for decades at a time.  Rather than reading into periods of silence, we ought to take to heart all God has said.  God has recorded and carefully preserved all that is important and relevant for us to read and grow in our understanding of Him, and He literally leads us to Jesus.  I have heard people refer to the centuries long gap of time between Malachi and the Gospels as "400 years of silence," but we can rest assured God was speaking throughout that time based upon His character, desire to be known and His delight of constant fellowship with His people.

Consider how the book of Malachi ends and how the Gospels begin.  Malachi 4:5-6 says, "Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD. ⁶ And he will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the earth with a curse.”  All four Gospels begin speaking about John the Baptist, the prophet God promised to send in the spirit of Elijah.  The Gospel of Mark states this explicitly in the first verses.  Thus the gap of time between Malachi and the Gospels picks up with God's fulfilment of His promise to send John who was the forerunner of Jesus.  God masterfully connected lives through thousands of years in His word to reveal Jesus Christ--the Son of David and Son of God--for all who have ears to hear.  Rather than seeing the Bible as a compiliation of 66 books crudely cobbled together, it is better to view the Bible as one God-breathed book of Scripture comprised of 66 books.  God is able to use biblical genealogies and even gaps of time to point people to Jesus because He is the Way, the Truth and the Life.