Hey, good morning church. If you would grab your Bible, Luke 24. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and then hold your place there. Go to Acts chapter 2. So, Luke, John, Acts, hold your place there. I'm just kidding. Just two places, okay? I got to be honest with you, I'm swinging for the fence this morning in this message. So, there's a lot to cover today. I need you to think, need you to lean in. Okay, all the notes, by the way, this morning are in the app. Just click on the app, click on message notes. They're all right there. Trust me, you cannot keep up with me this morning on this. We have a lot to cover. So, let's get to work.
We're in a three-part series on the Bible. We saw the first week what it is. It is God-breathed. God didn't breathe on this or doesn't breathe through this. He breathed this. It came from God. Last week, we saw how it works. It gets into your heart. It gets into your intentions and your motives and it's your authority. All these things. This morning is about who this massive book is about. Who's the main character? We have 66 books in this. You might even just call it a library. Multiple authors, multiple languages, multiple time periods and genres and styles and all these things. Who's the main character? That's the question this morning.
Now, you might argue, you could argue, and many have, that the Bible is about us. That the Bible is about us and what we should be doing. And it's instructions for us to live our life the best way that we can. So, somebody gave us this years ago: "Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth." You ever seen this? I think this came from the '90s. That was a tough decade for us. But I don't hate this, okay? This is true. The Bible has a lot of instructions and a lot of wisdom for us. So if you want to know how to do marriage God's way and parenting God's way and, you know, money God's way, this is kind of how you view the Bible.
This view that it's sort of about us and what we do, it tends to see all of those heroes, like in the Old Testament, as moral lessons for us. So David and Moses and, you know, Daniel with the lions' den, it tends to see all of those as, we should do that, we should be like them. So read these stories and they're sort of moral lessons, like Hebrews chapter 11 talks about. We see their faith and we do it. So it's kind of about us. It's what we should be doing. This view is fine. Okay. I think it's just incomplete for us, because here's what can happen. Here's where I think this view of the Bible can go wrong for us, is that it can lead us to what you might just call mere moralism.
What is that? It's just being a good person. It's just being a good guy and a good girl and just kind of keeping your word and, you know, not speeding too much, not cussing too much, picking up your trash, doing what you say you're going to do, telling the truth. It's being a good person. And that's all that matters. And so, you might see the Bible as just instructions and principles and wisdom for how you can just be a better person. And what can happen is you can have no affection for God. No burning in your heart for him, no love for him, no worship of him. Your goal is just to be a good person. And not sin too much. Keep your nose clean. And you might even start to think, this is why God loves me. I'm so good. I'm so nice. I'm a great listener. I'm a great friend. God has to love me. That's mere moralism.
And so we need this view of the Bible. We need the view that says, "Hey, there's things we should do in here." And it is about instructing us. We just need more. And I want to show you this morning, as best I possibly can, what the more is. There's more to this. The Bible is not mainly instructions and rules and laws and principles. And by the way, all those heroes that you think you should emulate, they were all flawed human beings. Moses, murderer. David, murderer, adulterer. Samson, just pick your sin. He breaks every law. He just finds them and breaks them. That's who you're trying to emulate. That's not how this is meant to go. Okay?
There's more to this. I would argue that the Bible is a story. It's not just simply stories and, you know, principles and ways to live your life. There's a story about this one that did not fall short. This one that did not sin, did not break God's law, and he obeys the word in all things. In fact, he's even called the Word. And so it's my argument this morning that the entire Bible from beginning to end is pointing to him and what he's done for us. You might put it like this: The Bible is primarily one story whose main character is Jesus. It's one story. All the stories, all the principles, all the laws, all the songs, they're all pointing us to him.
The Bible is primarily a story. So you have a story arc. You have a garden in the beginning and then you have, at the very end, if you read the very end of it, this glorified city. So you have this creation where all things are good. You have a fall where all things go bad. You have redemption where someone comes and rescues us. And you have this final restoration where all things are put right and as they should be. It's a story. And this story is meant to utterly transform us and change us forever and put us in awe of this one that all this story is pointing to. So the story is primarily about him. And if you miss him, you've missed the Bible.
Now, why do I say it that way? Why do I say that so strongly? Because the Bible says it that strongly. I want to show you this morning. You might not know this, but the Bible talks about this in ways that show us that if you miss the main centerpiece, the main character, the main person it's talking about, the star of this, you miss the entire thing. So if your finger is there, Luke 24. I can't land on anything this morning. We're going to be all over the place. So just kind of get ready for that.
Luke 24 is Jesus talking to these disciples after his resurrection. He makes these appearances. He'll show up, he'll have breakfast with them, and then he's gone. And he begins to teach them some things, and now all the lights are coming on for them. Okay? He's talking about how he now relates to the Old Testament Scriptures. What they would call the Law, Prophets, and the Psalms or Writings, what we call the Old Testament. Everything that's to your left in the Bible is what that's talking about. Okay. Here's what Jesus says. He meets with these disciples on the road to Emmaus. And he said to them, this is verse 25, "Oh, foolish ones," and he says that somewhat lightly, "and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken. Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things," meaning his crucifixion, "and enter into his glory?" "And beginning with Moses," Moses is shorthand for the first five massive books of your Bible, "and all the Prophets," Isaiah, Jeremiah, there's a huge list of these guys, "he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself." So, he just walks them through what their Bible, which is the entire Old Testament, and says, "This is all pointing to me. My death, my resurrection, my story, it's all pointing to me."
Look down at verse 44. This is a different appearance that he makes to some more people. "And he said to them, 'These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me,'" here we go, "'in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms,'" again, that's the entire Hebrew Bible, shorthand for all 39 books, "'must be fulfilled.' Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures." So once again he's saying the Law, the Prophets, the Writings, the Psalms, it's all talking about me. It's not just moral lessons. It's not just ways to live your life. It's all pointing to a person and it's all about him, is what Jesus is saying here.
I didn't have you turn there. Listen to John 5. He says this and they didn't like this. John 5, he tells the Pharisees, these religious leaders, and, you know, they know the law really well, "You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life. It is they that bear witness about me." And get this, "For if you believed Moses," which, Moses was their authority. He was their guy. "If you believed him, you would believe me, for he wrote of me." So here comes this man who comes along doing these miracles and teachings and he's saying everything that Moses was talking about, it's actually pointing to me. I mean, this is just blowing their minds. They're shattering their categories.
So Luke chapter 4, Jesus does, I know this is a so-2022 word, the most savage thing in all of the Gospels. Okay. He goes in the synagogue on a Saturday morning. They hand him the scroll of Isaiah that was all wound up in scrolls. Then he gets the scroll of Isaiah, unrolls the scroll, finds the place where it is the strongest prophecy, the most popular prophecy that Isaiah ever predicted. Jesus reads that, rolls the scroll up and says, "Isaiah is talking about me." And drops the scroll. And people are astonished at this. They tried to kill him, by the way. They drag him off to a cliff and try to kill him and he just walks through their midst. The text says, like Bugs Bunny fighting Elmer Fudd. You ever seen that? All the dust and Bugs hops out. Something like that. He's gone, though. They eventually would kill him and then fulfill the very Scriptures that he said he was about.
So all of this is pointing to him. Could you imagine being raised, from childhood, knowing all of these Scriptures, all these songs, all these covenants, promises, laws, just all the stories, and one comes along and says they're actually about me.
So I'm going to show you how this plays out. Now to be clear, I'm not saying that every verse in the Old Testament is directly talking about Jesus. Many of them are, that we call prophecies. There are about 60-ish of those that he fulfills in his death and resurrection. I'm talking about a much broader, much more sweeping understanding of the Old Testament. That all of this storyline, this narrative, is moving us somewhere. So you have to lift up now all of these passages, all these stories, into this big new current, this new reality, that now Christ has come, and it changes how they read their Scriptures.
So I'll give you an example of this in Acts 2. If I taught this without any authority on this, or just kind of out of my own brain, if I taught it this way, you would probably bench me. You'd be like, "Okay, get off stage. Take your Britney mic and just go do whatever it is that you do out there. This is not correct." This is going to blow your mind. I would wager to say you've never read it this way. Peter's preaching in the book of Acts. He quotes the Old Testament book of Psalms, Psalm 16. Now, that psalm was written a thousand years before Peter is preaching. A thousand years. David lived a thousand years before this time in history. And nothing about Psalm 16 would suggest that it's anything like a prophecy or some Messianic text or some "coming one." This is David talking to God about himself. Okay, that's how you'd read this.
Notice what Peter does with this. Peter is going to quote Psalm 16. "For David says concerning him," concerning Jesus, and I'll summarize this, "I saw the Lord always before me. He is at my right hand that I may not be shaken. Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices." Next, skip on down. Here's the part. "For you will not abandon my soul to Hades or let your Holy One see corruption. You have made known to me the paths of life." You've read this verse. I'm guessing it's one of your favorites in Psalm 16. Look at the next verse, what Peter says. "Brothers, I may say to you with confidence about the patriarch David that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. Being therefore a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that he would set one of his descendants on his throne," so David's son will always be on the throne, "he foresaw and spoke about the resurrection of the Christ, that he was not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption." And Peter loves this phrase: "This Jesus God raised up, and of that we all are witnesses."
Do you realize what Peter just did? He just sort of reinterpreted and reshaped a thousand years of theology for the Israelites. He says that David was talking about Jesus, that David foresaw, and he's writing about this one who would come. There's a greater David coming, is what he's saying here. And so really this means all the Psalms are about Jesus. Essentially, Psalm 1, he really is the truly blessed man. Psalm 2, he's the king that we bow down to. Psalm 3, he is our shield. He's our glory. Psalm 4, he's the one that gives us rest. Psalm 23, he's our good shepherd. You see this now? They're lifting all this up in this new reality and it's blowing their minds and shattering their categories.
Let me show you how this plays out. Okay, there was a movie 27 years ago, so we're getting to date ourselves here, called The Sixth Sense. Bruce Willis, he's dead the whole time. If you haven't seen that, sorry. You had 27 years. But he's dead the whole time. We don't know it, though. We have no idea. He gets shot. We think he's dead. We don't know what's happening. He works with this little boy. He's, I think, just like a child psychiatrist. The little boy is disturbed because he can see dead people and talk to them. Well, the whole time Bruce Willis is one of these dead people that he's talking to, but he has no clue. Now, his wife is terribly upset. She avoids him. We just think their marriage is bad. We have no idea that he's dead, that she cannot see him. And then finally at the end of the movie, it dawns on him and it utterly shocks him. I saw it a few weeks ago. It just shocks him that he's been dead the whole time. And then the movie starts cutting back to all these scenes and you're like, "I didn't see it. Oh, I didn't see it. There's the menu. How did we miss that?"
That's what happened to Peter. That's what happened to Paul. That's what happened to all the early Christians, is they're now seeing he's alive. He was dead and crucified and gone. They all gave up. Now he comes back and it changes how they viewed their Bibles. It utterly shocks them and changes everything about this one who would come. That all of this that they've learned from childhood, all of this is now pointing to him.
Listen to how Paul talks about this. This, by the way, 1 Corinthians 15, is one of the earliest books that we have, one of the earliest confessions of the gospel. "For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures." Which ones? All of them. He's not proof-texting. He's saying the storyline of the Bible is about this. "That he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures." So the gospel began in the Old Testament. Okay? So to understand who Jesus is, you have to understand this. It's been getting us ready for him this entire time. It's preparing us.
And so all of these stories and images and themes and people, I'll just give you a quick list of this. All these images: tabernacle, temple, Holy of Holies, high priests, spotless lamb, sacrifices, offerings, the bread from heaven, the altar, the bronze serpent, Moses says lifted up, the rock that was struck. It's all talking about him. It's all pointing us forward to him. You go into these themes of Sabbath. He's the Lord of the Sabbath. Exile, kingdom, creation, the covenants, the law. He's the end of the law. Paul says he fulfills the law. God's presence and glory is now with his Son.
You got these people, you know, Hebrews 11 gives us all these names. This Hall of Faith, we call this. I won't read all these. Abel, Enoch, Abraham. Just pick, there's so many names in this. And it says, "Look at them. Look at them. Look at them. Their faith, their faith, their faith." What does Hebrews chapter 12 say? "Let's fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith." So yeah, you look at Abraham, you glance at Moses, but you gaze at the Son. You gaze at this perfect one who did not fail, who accomplishes all of this. The whole thing is pointing to him.
So here's the math on this. I thought you'd be riveted by this this morning. So here's the math. The New Testament quotes the Old Testament roughly 300 times. Direct quotes. It's hard to tell when it's direct, but conservatively, you have 300 Old Testament quotations in the New Testament. So it is steeped in the Old Testament like a tea bag. It's just steeped in the Old Testament. The New Testament alludes to, by the way, NT stands for New Testament. OT stands for Old Testament. You got that right. Okay. Just trying to lighten the mood a little bit. All right. You have these, what scholars call allusions. Kind of just calling back to it. Over a thousand times the New Testament's calling us back to the Old Testament. So you got 1,300, easily, references in the New Testament. Here's what's crazy about all this. The New Testament only has 260 chapters. So you just about can't read a chapter without there being something in the Old Testament that is talking about this, has been getting us ready, and its currents all moving us toward the Son who would come and die and rise again in our place. The whole thing is about him, is what I'm arguing.
So, let me show you this. I have one point today. I tried three. It was too long. They kicked me off. One point. Let me give you one theme that is massive in the entire Bible that Jesus fulfills. Okay? And it's this: the longing for the true king.
Let me show you that. Okay? The book of Judges, if you've read that book, is one of the most gruesome, bloody, violent, immoral books in the entire Bible. Great for bedtime stories. A lot of folks dying with, like, you know, stakes in their heads. Crazy. But there's something the author does. There's four references where he says the same thing. Judges 17:6: "In those days Israel had no king. Everyone did as they saw fit." 18:1: "In those days Israel had no king." 19:1: "In those days Israel had no king." 21:25: "In those days Israel had no king. Everyone did as they saw fit." See how it's bookended? What's the point? They need a king. You need a king who will rule over you. Not just any king, but the true king, the good king who rules in righteousness and justice and kindness and sits on his throne and everyone flourishes this way. They don't have one.
So, they begin to demand a king. God gives them a king. The first king of Israel was called Saul. Okay? He was very tall. And very tall. That's about it. Okay? He did a few good things, but he betrays God. God rejects him. And then God raises up David. King David. David would be the greatest king in the history of Israel. He is the standard of all the kings before and after him. David is the one who fights Goliath. He brings all this prosperity. Builds up the city. There's all this peace. But then 20 years go by and the whole thing with Bathsheba happens. He takes the wife of Uriah. Uriah is one of his mighty men. A guy who's in his inner circle who protects David. He takes his wife and has Uriah killed. This, by the way, ruined David's dynasty. The next 20 years, he's on the run. His sons betray him. It's all chaos after this. Then he dies.
God raises up Solomon because God promised David, there will always be one of your descendants on the throne. One of your sons will always sit on the throne of Israel. Solomon comes along. He's awesome for about three chapters. All this wisdom, all this wealth, but he turns from the Lord. He has all these wives and concubines. I mean, he would laugh at Sister Wives. He's like, "Bro, four? I got 400." Okay, it derails him. And so then the nation splits. You have Israel, you have Judah, this divided kingdom now. And then after this, you have 400 years of kings that would come and go. They'd rise to power. They'd do some things. They would die. One king would replace them.
So, let me give you the political landscape of Israel after Solomon. All the kings fall into three categories. Good, bad, or like a mixture. They did some good stuff, mostly bad stuff, but some good stuff. Here's Israel's history. We have one guy who's a good king in Israel after Solomon and David. And by the way, bad means wicked. These guys were, like, burning their kids at altars for other gods. You just thought travel ball parents were mean. I mean, these guys were lighting their children on fire. Judah, this is where David was, a little bit better. Okay, you got mostly bad people, though. You got a couple of, you know, mixture. You got a few good kings and that's it.
So, imagine your least favorite president. Don't say it. Some of you are already queued up. Imagine now. Imagine 400 years of that. That's what's happening in the nation of Israel and Judah. So finally God uses more wicked nations to come in and wipe them out. And so now we're back to, there's no king in Israel. And this idea just sort of sits out there for centuries. Alec Motyer, who's an Old Testament scholar, writes on this. He says that every time this new king would come and he would do some bad things and he would die, the nation would say something like this: There must be something better than this. There's got to be something better than all of these kings who are just so wicked and frail, and there must be a better king coming. There's no king in Israel.
But this idea hangs out there and there starts to be these rumors. The prophets, the preachers, start preaching these messages that there's a king coming. There's another king coming. There's one who's going to come and make all things right. Set the world right. Set us right. Put down the enemies forever. This king is coming. Wait on him.
So, I'll give an example. Isaiah, the book of Isaiah is huge. It's 66 chapters. You might divide it up in three ways. 1 through 39: there's a king coming, a different one. One that rules in justice and righteousness. 40 through 55: there's a suffering servant. One that would come and be pierced and chastised and judged, not for his own sins but for our sins. He's going to suffer. And then 56 through 66, the last 10: a conqueror who will make all things right. So, who in the world could do that? They're longing for this new king, this true king, to come and set all things right.
And by the way, it's not just Israel that needs a king. The whole world needs a king. You need a king and I need a king. Now, all of us know this deep down. We know that we need someone to rule over us. Someone we can come under their authority and trust and bow down to and worship and treasure and that rules over us in righteousness and justice and glory. We long for that. But the problem is we serve the wrong kings. We serve the kings of our career, the kings of our appearance, the kings of our popularity, the kings of our influence. We all bow down to something. Bob Dylan told us this years ago. You got to serve somebody. I mean, you can be rich or poor. You're going to serve somebody. Everyone's bowing down to something. And we long for the true king.
Now, it's interesting if you do some reading and some watching and some listening of things. You see, all of the myths and legends and stories have been talking about this for centuries. We just haven't really been listening to it. So, I'll confess to you, I have failed you the last two messages. I have not quoted Lewis or Tolkien. So, I'm going to repent now and do that. Okay. But there's a reason behind this. Not just random. Might be, but there's a reason behind that.
The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien's massive work, it is more popular now than ever. There's a new season coming out on Amazon, I think on the 11th or something. This story is this massive work that has been a bestseller for, I mean, for decades. What's it about? I'll tell you what it's about if you haven't read it. It's about this: You need a king. That's the whole point. If you don't have a king ruling over you, the true king on his throne, ruling and reigning, Sauron takes over. Darkness takes over. It will rule over you. But the king is coming. He's in the north. He's in exile. Aragorn. But he's going to come back, make all things right. There's healing in his hands. He'll make all sad things come untrue. That's what it's talking about.
Narnia is talking about this. It's The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. I just read it again this past week. Everything's frozen. It's always winter and never Christmas. The White Witch has frozen everything. But Aslan, the king, is on the move. Everything begins to melt. "And when he bares his teeth, winter meets its death. And when he shakes his mane, we'll have spring again. At the sound of his roar, sorrows will be no more. When Aslan comes in sight, it's all made right." Yes, I memorized that years ago. So, you're welcome. The whole thing's talking about this king who would come.
The Odyssey, which just came out, by the way, it's an ancient story that Homer wrote. It's about this idea that Odysseus, he's gone. He's at war. Ithaca turns to ruin, but he's coming back again to make all things right, to put down evil forever, and to reign as the true king. The King Arthur legends. I watched one of these yesterday, the Guy Ritchie film. It's phenomenal. Excalibur. This is a long legend in Britain. But here's the once and future king that once reigned. He's going to come back again and with Excalibur rule over the world and make all things right. Robin Hood is about this idea. You know, King Richard is gone. He's at war. The sheriff takes over. He's evil, but the king's going to come back again, make all things right, with Bryan Adams, and it's going to be awesome. Some of you have seen that, Kevin. We need a new Robin Hood, but that's the old one. The Lion King is about this. Mufasa is dead and Simba is off singing songs and Scar's on the throne and hyenas and Whoopi Goldberg and there's just darkness all around, but Simba's going to come back, put Scar down forever. Everyone's going to flourish. We're going to sing to Elton John once again. This is what it's talking about.
And then randomly, there's this song I keep hearing everywhere. It's on commercials. It's on YouTube videos. Kind of this epic instrumental song. It's called "Outro" by a group, M83. You've heard this, I'm guessing. But it has, like, seven lyrics. And the last lyric says, "Now and forever, I'm your king."
Why are we, as modern people, writing and reading and watching, and I could list 50 more movies and titles and games and ideas, all about this one coming to make all things right? Why are we talking about this still? Well, because all of these myths and legends and stories are pointing to what C.S. Lewis called the true myth. That Christianity is the true myth. That the Bible's been telling us that there is a king that we need. One that would protect us, one that would make all things right, and one that would make us right.
So, back to Isaiah, who would come as king and then suffer and then conquer death and evil forever. Well, Luke 19 tells us that Jesus comes riding into town, into the city, on a donkey, humbly, and they say to him, "Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord." Then he's arrested. He's beaten. He's mocked. He's crucified for us. The king suffers in our place, not for his sins, but for ours. And then God raises him up victoriously over death, over hell, over sin, over Satan forever. And one day, he will come back to set all things right. This is the king we've been looking for. This is the one that we've been longing for, that all the stories are pointing us to. This is the true and better David.
Why is David so great? Why was he such a great king? I'll tell you why. He goes out to fight for his people when nobody else would. Goliath shows up, this giant, this massive military figure that no one can conquer. And there's this little shepherd boy. They're all, Israel is all cowering on the side just watching this, screaming at this guy, but no one will do anything. David runs out and he kills the giant with, you know, a stone. He cuts his head off and now David is the warrior king. That's why he's so good. And that's the kind of king that you need.
See, back to our whole point of this message. There is a point to all this. If you read the Bible as mainly about us, you would read the story of David and Goliath and think, "Okay, I got to go fight my giants now. I have this big presentation. I have this big game. I have this big conversation. And I have this big boss that's really mad at me. I got to go face my giants. David faced his giants. I can face my giant." And that's not wrong. But here's what I would say to that. The problem is there is an enemy that you cannot defeat by yourself. There is a giant that you cannot slay by yourself. There is a giant of sin and death and the enemy that is at war against your soul that you are powerless, and I am powerless, to overcome and conquer. We need someone to fight for us. We need someone who will stand in our place and will go out and fight the battle for us. And that's the king that you have.
We have this king who comes and crushes the head of the serpent the way Genesis prophesied centuries ago. This one who would come with healing in his hands and conquer death forever and put everything right forever. That's the king. Do you realize that your God, your king, fights for you? You can just rest in that. He's the one that goes to battle and fights your wars for you and he wins. So read it that way. Then go face your giants. That's the king that you have.
I'm almost done. That was all the Old Testament. What about the New Testament? Some of you are asking that. It's the same thing. It's all about him. It's the king in his beauty. It's like this firework display of all the things that Christ is for us. All that he's done for us. So, give me 45 seconds. I'll give you the entire New Testament. Okay. Matthew, he is the promised king that's coming. Mark, he's our suffering servant. Luke, he seeks and saves the lost. John, he is the Word, the eternal Word made flesh. Acts, he is the Lord over his church, his people. Romans, he's our righteousness. Corinthians, he's Christ crucified and God's yes to us. Galatians, he's our justifier. Ephesians, he's the lover of his bride. Colossians, he is the image of the invisible God. Philippians, he's our joy and our humble servant. Thessalonians, he's our returning king who ends lawlessness forever. Timothy, he's our mediator, worthy of our suffering. Titus, he's the grace of God that's appeared to us. Philemon, he's our true freedom. Hebrews, he is our perfect and once-for-all sacrifice. James, he's our glorious Lord. Peter, he's our true shepherd whose coming is certain. First, second, third John, he is our living truth and the name that we walk in. Jude, he's the one that keeps us until the end. Revelation, he is the slain Lamb and the coming conqueror of death and sin and evil and Satan forever. And that's why all of heaven sings this one song: "Worthy is the Lamb who was slain to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and glory and praise and honor forever."
I have a good friend who's a huge Braves fan. And he does this weird thing. He watches all the games only if they win. He's in our church, by the way. I love this guy. But he only watches the games that they win. So he has this system where he'll record it and he'll check the score that night, and if they won he'll watch it the next day and if they lost he won't. And I just think that's so hilarious. But also, imagine watching a game knowing your team wins. You're never panicked. You're never freaking out that we're down by seven in the third inning. We just gave up a grand slam. But hey, we're going to win. Three errors. We're going to, it doesn't matter. We're going to win. That's how you read your Bible. We're going to win. There's one that conquered for us, that overcame for us, that fights in our place. Our king. This is the one that we look to. The whole thing is about him.
So, practically, every text you read, every chapter you read, at some point when you're doing your study, okay, lift it up and ask, how does Jesus impact this passage? What's it mean in light of him? He died, rose again. He's my king. How do I now read this in light of him? The whole thing is about him. And by the way, if you think that this book is made up, you have way more faith than I do, because no one makes this up. It's all pointing to him over centuries. No one makes this up. But this story is about him. And if you immerse yourself in this book, you're going to get to know him, because you can know this king. This king is also our friend and he's near to us. So go to him. This is the Bible. Let's love this book. Let our hearts burn for joy for this and walk with this king that has fought for us.
Let me pray for us. God, thank you that you have given us this book that tells us of this living Word that came and fought for us and died and rose again for us. I pray that our hearts, as those disciples early on when they met him, that our hearts would burn as we read this. So God, keep us from mere moralism. God, you made us for more than that. Give us zeal and passion for your Son who loved us and gave himself up for us. Help us to open this book and, as hard as it is, as much work as it is at times, help us to know that this is what leads us to life because it leads us to you. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.