First Presbyterian Church
Wichita Falls, Texas
May 8, 2011
CHRIST IN ALL THE SCRIPTURES
Isaac Butterworth
Luke 24:13-35 (NIV)
‘He said to them, “How foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Did not the Christ have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?” And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself’ (Luke 24:25-27).
‘They asked each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?”’ (Luke 24:32).
Today is Mother’s Day, and we want to express to all our mothers and grandmothers -- and to those who have had a maternal influence in our lives -- we want to say ‘thank you,’ ‘we love you,’ and ‘we sincerely desire your happiness, certainly on this day but just as certainly on all your days.’
My own mother was a remarkable embodiment of both beauty and duty. She was lovely in appearance, and I think early in her life she turned many a head. But her real beauty was her embrace of duty. She worked hard from the time she was a child until, in her final years, she could no longer work. And she did it because, in her view, it was what she was supposed to do.
When I was quite young, we did not have a car, and my mother had to ride to work on a bus. Sometimes she would have to take me to a friend’s house before going to work. I remember one bitterly cold day, standing in ice and snow, waiting for the bus. The wind cut through my clothing like a razor. My mother, who was always attentive to my needs, drew me into her embrace and wrapped her big coat around me. Never was a child so safe and warm as I was that day.
Our mothers do many things for us, especially when we are children. They establish a protective environment, they structure our days, they cook our meals and clean our clothes, they tend to us when we’re sick, they cheer us on when we face our own challenges, they comfort and support us. They also teach us. James Russell Lowell once said, ever so succinctly, ‘The best academy, a mother’s knee.’ For many of us it was our mothers who first taught us about the Savior. So, we learn about Christ from our mothers. This is not uncommon -- is it? -- for our mothers to instruct us from the Bible. When they do -- when they teach us the Bible -- they don’t just teach us the stories of Noah and the ark or David and Goliath or Daniel in the lion’s den. They show us Christ. For it is Christ that the Scriptures portray. If you read the Bible with a believing heart, you will see Christ on every page. And I don’t mean that in a sentimental sense. Truly, what I mean to say is that all of Scripture speaks of Christ.
Jesus himself confirmed this. It was on the afternoon of the first Easter, when our Lord, newly risen from the grave, appeared to two disciples traveling on the road from Jerusalem to a nearby village called Emmaus. He listened to their conjectures about the events of the last few days, how Christ had been ‘handed over’ to the authorities and how they had ‘crucified him’ and how the women had reported that he was alive, but none of the Twelve disciples had actually seen him. These two travelers on their way to Emmaus were in a fog of confusion. But the fog was about to clear. Jesus was about to make everything plain.
‘How foolish you are,’ he said, ‘and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Did not the Christ have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?’ Then, Luke says, ‘Beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, [Jesus] explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself’ (Luke 24:25-27). Highlight in your mind, if you will, these very words: ‘what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.’ For it is Christ we find, whether we open our Bibles to Genesis or the Psalms or the Gospels or Revelation. What we see ‘in all the Scriptures,’ as Jesus himself put it, is the unfolding of God’s plan of redemption in Christ. All of Scripture speaks of him.
I. The Bible Is the Story of Christ
Let’s look again at Jesus’ words to these two travelers, and we will see how the whole Bible really is one story and how that one story is the story of Christ. ‘...Beginning with Moses and all the Prophets,’ Luke writes, ‘[Jesus] explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself’ (Luke 24:26).
One of my favorite writers is a seventeenth century Presbyterian pastor named John Flavel. Mr. Flavel once wrote: ‘It is worthy [of] our observation, how God made a gradual discovery [that is, an unfolding revelation] of Christ from Adam down along to the New Testament times. It was revealed to Adam that [Christ] should be the seed of the woman, but not of what nation, till Abraham’s time; nor of what tribe, till Jacob; nor of what sex or family, till David; nor that he should be born of a virgin, till Isaiah; nor in what town, till Micah.’ But gradually, over time, each of these facts was revealed, as we see in the pages of Scripture. All of Scripture speaks of Christ.
Once, when Jesus was in a confrontation with the religious leaders of his day, he said to them: ‘You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these that testify about me...’ (John 5:39f.). The whole Bible, you see, is the story of this Christ. All of Scripture bears witness to him. All of it. But what does it tell us about him? What does it say about Christ?
II. The Bible Reveals the Gospel of Christ
Just this: The Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, from beginning to end, reveals the gospel of Christ. The gospel is its message from one end to the other. And what is the gospel? It is the ‘good news’ of how, from eternity, before ever God created anything, before he ever uttered the words, ‘Let there be light,’ before he did anything else, the Father made a covenant with the Son. God knew that we would need rescue, so he provided for it. The Son would lay aside his glory, take on our flesh, stand in our place, live a life of perfect obedience, and then offer his life for our disobedience. In turn, the Father would anoint, strengthen, accept, and reward the work of the Son by raising him from the dead and restoring to life all who trust in him. This is the gospel.
Jesus asked his friends on the Emmaus road, ‘Did not the Christ have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?’ (Luke 24:26). And, of course, what he meant was: Don’t the Scriptures reveal that Christ had to ‘suffer these things,’ things like being ‘handed...over’ and ‘crucified’? In other words, doesn’t the Bible show us the cross and the resurrection from start to finish? ‘But how?’ you might ask.
Here’s how: A good way to think about the story of the Bible is to see it laid out in four grand periods of time. First, there is Creation, when God, humanity, and nature all dwelled in perfect harmony. This perfection, of course, was disrupted by the Fall, by which we mean the disobedience of Adam and Eve. But even in that dark hour, God’s redemptive plan was in motion. God spoke to the tempter in the Garden, that ‘snake in the grass’ who had led our first parents astray, and God said: ‘...I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel’ (Genesis 3:15). And with those words, God unveiled his grand plan of redemption, a rescue effort of huge proportions which he would accomplish in Christ.
Then comes the second period of time, one in which redemption was foreshadowed. God now began to work out his plan in which he would restore perfect harmony to his good creation. You can see this foreshadowing in God’s covenants with Abraham and Moses and David.
The third period takes place during the time of the prophets. In this era, the people were, for the most part, disaffected from God. They were apathetic, indifferent, and downright rebellious. In short, they were unfaithful. But Scripture’s account of this period tells how God’s plan of redemption was still at work. The prophets of Israel, although they were in the minority, told of One who would come who would do what Israel could not do -- and what all others, for that matter, could not do. He would be faithful to God. And he would do it on our behalf. He would be the Messiah, the One anointed by God to bring salvation and restoration to God’s people.
Finally, the Bible tells how God’s plan of redemption was completed in Jesus Christ, how it came to consummation. Jesus’ birth, his life, his death, his resurrection and ascension -- all these have brought God’s reclamation project to its final stages. You can see it at work in the church, and it will take its ultimate form in what the Bible calls ‘the new heavens and the new earth,’ which amount to what? A New Creation. This whole pattern reveals -- doesn’t it? -- that the whole Bible is about Christ from beginning to end.
III. The Bible Commands Faith in Christ
And, if it is, then what is our response to be? Jesus told us in his conversation with the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. He said to them, ‘How foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken!’ (Luke 24:25).
What does that tell us? It tells us that we are to leave all foolishness behind, that we are no longer to be slow of heart, but that we are ‘to believe.’ We are ‘to believe all that the prophets have spoken’ -- and, for that matter, all that the rest of the Bible’s authors ‘have spoken.’ What they have said, they have said to summon us to faith in Christ. In the words of the Westminster Confession, God has ‘freely offered unto sinners life and salvation by Jesus Christ, requiring of them faith in him, that they may be saved, and promising to give [them] his Holy Spirit, to make them willing and able to believe’ (WCF, VII.3). The Bible, from the first page to the last, commands faith in Christ.
If you are a mother or grandmother, you want to build faith into your children. I want to recommend to you two Bible story books, especially if you have young children in your life. Both of these books are written from a Reformed perspective. One is by David Helm and is called The Big Picture Story Bible. The other is by Sally Lloyd-Jones and is entitled The Jesus Storybook Bible. What I like about both these books is that they show how ‘every story whispers His name.’ They show how the Bible is not just a collection of stories about heroic people of old; instead, they show that there is one story that runs throughout the pages of Scripture.
It is the story of God’s plan to redeem his people in and through Christ. That’s what I want to say to you today: All of Scripture speaks of Christ, and, therefore, all of Scripture leads to Christ.
