September 24
September 24
The Bible isn’t an anthology of stories; it is one unified story. The Bible isn’t a sampling of isolated promises; it is a collection of promises that all find their fulfillment in Jesus.
When you hold your Bible in your hands to do your daily reading, you should know what you are holding. Your Bible isn’t a simple collection of stories with morals for your everyday living. Your Bible isn’t a mere collection of wisdom principles to make your life better. Your Bible isn’t a systematic theology textbook. Your Bible is the story of God’s grand redemptive plan. It is a story with many chapters, but it is one unified story. Maybe the best way to say it is that the Bible is God’s grand redemptive story, containing his explanatory and applicatory notes. Your Bible tells the story of how this world was created, how sin entered and damaged the world, how that will get fixed, and what the final end of all things will look like. There is one hero in the Bible. He is the one about whom the Old Testament prophesies, whose life and work the New Testament chronicles, and whose work the Epistles explain. Your Bible is the biography of Jesus.
You should read your Bible with its unity in mind. One of the places where you see this unity clearly is in the book of Zechariah. This book is one of the Old Testament books quoted most by New Testament authors. Under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, these New Testament writers understood that the many prophecies made to Israel ultimately pointed to and would have their final fulfillment in the coming, the person, and the redeeming work of Jesus. They understood that the partial fulfillment of these passages in Old Testament times was not the end of the story. If, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, they looked into the Old Testament and saw Jesus, then we should do the same.
One of the most striking and specific passages that finds its ultimate fulfillment in Jesus is in Zechariah 9:
Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion!
Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem!
Behold, your king is coming to you;
righteous and having salvation is he,
humble and mounted on a donkey,
on a colt, the foal of a donkey. (Zech. 9:9)
Matthew quotes this passage on the occasion of Jesus’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem, where he would be tried for crimes he did not commit, suffer and die for our sins, and rise again to ascend in victory to the right hand of his Father (Matt. 21:5). Jesus is the humble King. He comes not to set up an earthly kingdom, but to suffer and die, so that his kingdom may reign in the hearts of all who believe and so that his final kingdom may one day come. Zechariah writes of more than a promised earthly king. He writes of the King of kings, who is also the Lamb of sacrifice. Here in some of the final words of the Old Testament is gospel hope. We have the assurance that there is one hope in this life and the one to come: Jesus.