The Bible is a Story About Jesus
By Steve Weaver
Clearly the New Testament is about the person and work of Jesus Christ. The entire canon of Scripture testifies that Jesus is the Christ. Jesus himself believed the Old Testament was about him. He said to the Pharisees in John 5:39, “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me.” After His resurrection, Jesus similarly interprets the Old Testament in Luke 24:27, “And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.” These verses show that not only is the New Testament about Jesus, so is the Old Testament!
It is easy to see how the New Testament is about Jesus. After all, the first four books (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) are basically biographies of Jesus. The rest of the New Testament is clearly dedicated to the explanation of the significance of the life and death of Jesus. But what about the Old Testament? How is the Old Testament about Jesus when His name is not directly mentioned?
One way to answer these questions is to understand that many passages in the Old Testament are predictive of the work of Christ. These passages explicitly describe something about Jesus in advance through prophecy. The first such prediction is the one we examined in last week’s article on Genesis 3:15 where we learn that Jesus is the Seed of the woman. Other promises include Genesis 12:3 which clarifies that this Seed of the woman will be of the family of Abraham in whose Seed (Galatians 3:16) all the nations of the earth will be blessed. Further predictions of Christ include those which specify that Christ will be in the line of Isaac, Jacob and Judah. In Deuteronomy 18:15, Moses says that one day God will raise up a Prophet like him, but one to whom the people would actually listen. God promised David that one of his descendants would sit enthroned as King forever (2 Samuel 7:12-14a). In Isaiah 7:14, the child called Immanuel (meaning God with us) was prophesied to be born of a virgin. In Isaiah 53, the coming Servant of the Lord is described as suffering in graphic detail and this passage points clearly to the suffering which Jesus experienced approximately 700 years later. Likewise, the Psalmist in Psalm 22 describes the passion of the Christ hundreds of years in advance. There is even a prophecy recorded in Micah 5:2 that “The One to be Ruler in Israel, Whose goings forth are from of old, from everlasting” would be born in a little town called Bethlehem. Then comes the New Testament where the promises made in the Old are finally and faithfully kept!
This post is the fourth in a series of six that seeks to develop the following summarizing sentence about the Bible: “The Bible is the story of a God who makes a spectacular promise about a supernatural person who creates a special people to live in a supernal place with Him forever.” This week’s post has shown that the Bible is the story of a supernatural person, namely Jesus.
Read the previous posts by Steve Weaver:
The Bible is a Story About God
The Bible is a Story About a Promise
Steve Weaver is the pastor of Farmdale Baptist Church in Frankfort, KY. He is married to Gretta and they have been blessed by God with six children (Haddon, 12; Hannah, 10; Isaac, 7; Jonathan, 5; Lydia, 4; and Katherine, 0). Steve holds an M.Div. from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Church History at The Southern Seminary. His area of research is 17th century British Particular Baptist pastor, Hercules Collins. He also is a Research and Administrative Assistant to the Director of The Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies, Michael A.G. Haykin. He blogs at pastorsteveweaver.wordpress.com.
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