Every Story Points to Jesus
What is your all-time favorite Bible story? Do you like the action-packed stories with battles, armies and the clanging of swords, or do you prefer the gentle stories where Jesus shows His compassion and care for ordinary people?
I grew up going to “Sunday School.” Truly, I was there from the time I was a fetus. I literally only remember staying home from church one time as a child and that was when I got my tonsils out. Even then, my mother made me watch a church service on TV.
I have heard the stories and events of the Bible told to me over and over, and then later read them for myself…and I love them! From the famous to the obscure, I love to imagine them in full color 3D, and I love digging down to discover what they show me about who God is and His plan for His people.
It is such a joy to have spent the majority of my time in ministry retelling these events and helping the kids of the next generation discover who God is through His stories.
What I love is that the Bible is not just a bunch of stories compiled and put into one book. The events shared with us are not random and separate. They are not unrelated and without a theme.
The Bible is telling us one BIGGER story—the story of God’s love and plan to redeem His people. The Bible is about JESUS. In Discovery Kids, we use “kid language” to explain it this way: “Sin messed everything up, but God sent Jesus to fix what was broken.” This is the story of the Bible.
Every part of the Bible points to Jesus. It starts with God’s perfect creation where there were all good choices and only one bad choice. And since the choice was made to break God’s one rule, we now, as Erwin McManus says, “have so many bad choices we could make and have to constantly search for the good ones.”
The sin cycle began with that one choice.
In the Old Testament, we hear the stories of obedience, rebellion, and repentance repeated over and over. And then between the Old and New Testaments—400 years of silence.
The silence was finally broken by the cry of a baby—Jesus, God’s Son sent to Earth at just the right time to fulfill God’s plan to rescue His people once and for all.
If the Bible is truly all about Jesus, it might seem strange that He appears so late in the game. Or does He? If you take a closer look at those “Sunday School” stories, you will see that each one points to Jesus.
Noah was rescued by an ark pointing to Jesus who would one day rescue His people.
Abraham was promised his family would bless the world, and it did through Jesus.
All the sacrifices point to Jesus as the ultimate sacrifice.
The pages of the Bible are filled with stories that point us to Jesus. If we look, we can catch a glimpse of Him on every page.
So, here is a challenge for you from the Discovery Kids team: As you spend time reading the Bible either in the Old or New Testament, think about how what you are reading connects to the Gospel. See if you can find hints of Jesus on each and every page. As you read for yourself or with your kids, find the common thread that pulls the Bible together into one big beautiful story!
