The rest of the story.

John Farley
Pastor-Teacher
Sunday,
August 24, 2014

The rest of the story

I REALLY like how the Bible ends.

I really like where you and I are right now in the story, with this marvelous church age.

The Bible can be seen as a series of stories that run throughout its pages.

Then we get down the road a bit, and seemingly out of nowhere the story picks up again.

A man called the I.R.S. and asked if birth control pills could be deducted.

The I.R.S. worker, not missing a beat, came back and said, ‘Only if they don’t work’.

The Bible is like that.

You need to hear the rest of the story if you want to make sense of the whole thing.

The book of Genesis introduces spectacular stories, subjects, people, and conflicts.

Adam and Eve, and the serpent in the garden.

The fall, and the promise of a savior.

Starting new with Noah and his three sons.

Trouble at Babel.

The Lord makes these promises to Abraham, here in the very first book of the Bible.

We have to read through thousands of years of this story before we read about God fulfilling those promises.

Fast forward to today and read the headlines and the Arabs and the Jews are still enemies.

We meet Moses who delivers God’s people out from slavery in Egypt.

New story lines get introduced by the prophets.

They told of times future when the Lord’s dealings with Israel would reach a climax and a resolution.

As we wrap up the Old Testament, the book of Malachi. ends on a note of expectation.

We need to keep reading to learn the rest of the story.

In the Gospels we meet Jesus Christ.
He’s the hero of the whole Bible.

He’s the one that makes all the stories work and resolve themselves. It all centers around Him and is for Him and in Him.

The Gospels introduce new subjects of their own. One is that this Jesus, the Messiah, had to be crucified.

Christ took on the curse of sin to free us: from sin, from law, and from the sting of death.

God His Father raised Jesus God’s Son from the dead.

The gospels end, and there is still anticipation. What will happen now?

By reading Acts we learn that this gospel is for the whole world.

And we see Paul introduced to be the apostle who takes the good news all over the Gentile world.

Yet even the book of Acts ends with the expectation that there is more to the story that is yet to come.

Paul and other apostles wrote magnificent letters of their own to Christians all across the Roman Empire.

We need to read these letters to in order to get the rest of the story.

Romans introduces all the great themes about this new age that has dawned.

A lot of people get hung up with things that come up along the way, …

when what they actually need to do is to read the rest of the story!

Jesus says at one point in the gospels that people are to pick up their cross and follow him.

Christ dies on the cross, for us.

We find out in Romans the rest of the story…

When He died, we died with Him!

All the crucifying is over.
 
Tetelestai. It is finished.

There is only one Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!