The Bible: What's in it FOR ME? Promise and Fulfillment (Acts 3:11-26)

The Crystal Ball

Almost 10 years ago there was a fire in a London apartment. The fire destroyed a bedroom. It was your everyday typical housefire, until a few days later, London fire officials took to social media to warn people about leaving crystal balls in windows. Apparently, the crystal ball had been left on the window sill and the sunlight moving through the crystal ball lit the curtains on fire. They warned other glass objects left in windows had been blamed for quite a few fires in recent years, but this was a first… a crystal ball. One fire official said “you can’t predict the future, but you can prevent lighting your curtains on fire”.

That comment alludes to the practice of using crystal balls to predict the future, something I would advise against. I chuckle though… as kids my grandma had one of those Magic 8 balls and while those things are a version of the crystal ball, typically the whole thing becomes a mockery because it was always a game of who could ask the dumbest or craziest or silliest question. Will the Bengals win the Super Bowl this year? Well.... duh!

The Bible: What’s in it FOR ME?

This morning we are finishing our series on how to read our Bibles. The Bible What’s in it for me? And we’ve covered a few of the principles that we use to help us read our Bibles better:

The Bible What’s in it FOR ME? (Jesus)

The Bible What’s in it FOR ME? (Forgiveness, Life, and Salvation)

The Bible What’s in it FOR ME? (One Story)

The Bible What’s in it FOR ME? (Law and Gospel)

The Bible What’s in it FOR ME? (Promise and Fulfillment)

We’ve spent some time here at The Table on how to read our Bibles better because of the upcoming series on The Bible Binge. And the final principle we’re looking at we’ve alluded to already in our series as we think about Jesus being in all of the Bible and the Bible being One Story of Jesus and finding our story in that story. But as we read that One Story as it unfolds from Genesis to Revelation, we find that the story is unfolding in a rhythm of promise and fulfillment.

This is super important to understand, especially as we exist in a Christian and evangelical culture that doesn’t think too much about this and in fact takes the promise another direction. When was the last time you heard some pastor or Bible teacher say this: “We can trust the Bible because of all the predictions in the Old Testament that came true during Jesus’ lifetime”? I heard that often as a kid. And while these teachers and pastors mean well, they are training us to think that God spent a lot of time predicting stuff about the future and then making sure that it came true so that he could prove that he is the real God.

When we start looking at the Bible that way, it’s as if the Old Testament was just one big crystal ball. People gazing into the future (with God’s help) and predicting stuff because God knew the future. And while it’s true that God does know the future and made many statements about what would happen in the future… that is not a correct way of thinking about all those quote unquote “predictions”. You treat the Bible like that, as if what’s happening is a magic crystal ball that tells us the future, and pretty soon Jesus is no longer the center of the Bible.

So, here are some things that we can say about how we read the Bible, especially the Old Testament, in light of Jesus’ life, death, resurrection and exaltation.

The Old Testament anticipates and foreshadows the New Testament

The Old Testament anticipates and foreshadows the New Testament. God has designed the people, the events, the stories, the poetry, and even the prophecy in the Old Testament in such a way that led the original hearers and readers to long for a coming Messiah. The story of Jonah for instance. Jonah disobeys God and doesn’t go to the city of Israel’s enemies like God told him to, gets on a boat, there’s a bad storm, Jonah gets thrown overboard and he’s swallowed by a big fish. 3 days later, the fish spits him out on the shore and Jonah goes to the big bad city like he was supposed to. That story, Jesus says, foreshadows what death will be like for him. But here’s the thing. God orchestrated all the events of Jonah’s story so that the original readers would anticipate a coming Savior who would rise in three days. God planned the entire story that way. That’s not an accident. That’s not Jesus dreaming up a way to explain his impending death. Jesus is reading the Old Testament and He says that story was always about me. It’s about Jonah, but ultimately, it’s about me.

All of the Old Testament is to be read that way. We’re not just reading stuff into the stories. God planned the stories and the people and the events to get us to see a coming Messiah who would save Israel from her sins. That’s why we’re supposed to see Jesus throughout all of the Old Testament.

The importance of Genesis 3:15

We said this a few weeks ago. This is why Genesis 3:15 becomes important for the entire Old Testament.

Genesis 3:15 “I will put hostility between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He will strike your head, and you will strike his heel.”

This is God’s promise to Adam and Eve through His words to the serpent. Eve will have an offspring who will destroy the serpent. And the rest of the Old Testament after that is how that story of the seed of the woman unfolds. It’s all planned. It’s all orchestrated by God to show us how the seed of the serpent and seed of the woman will be at war till one offspring ends it all. And of course we know that offspring as Jesus.

The New Testament interprets the Old Testament

But if we say the Old Testament anticipates and foreshadows the New Testament, the New Testament then, interprets the Old Testament. We’ve already seen how Jesus interprets the Jonah story. All of Jesus’ interpretation of the Old Testament and then the apostles and New Testament writers are all interpreting the Old Testament this way. So, we follow the pattern of Jesus and the apostles. We read the Old Testament the same way they did.

One of Jesus’ best friends named John gave us their pattern in his biography of Jesus.

John 20:31 “These are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”

John says he wrote his biography so that we would believe that Jesus is the Promised One of the Old Testament and by believing in that Messiah have eternal life. But he’s also saying this:

John 20:31 “The entire Bible has been written, including the Old Testament, so that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”

That brings us to our passage today. In Acts 3, Peter is preaching a sermon to a crowd that has gathered at the Temple. And the crowd is all abuzz. Peter and John had just healed a man who had always been a cripple. Everybody knew the guy. He was one who was always parked at one of the gates to the Temple begging. He’s healed. Everybody knows it. And they’ve seen this before. Some of them are there… we thought we got rid of this. We crucified Jesus. And now, here are his friends doing the same thing. Deja Vu. And Peter wants to know “Why is this shocking?” C’mon, we’ve been saying the same thing for 3 years. Jesus is the real deal. and he pulls no punches

Acts 3:14–15 “You denied the Holy and Righteous One and asked to have a murderer released to you. You killed the source of life, whom God raised from the dead; we are witnesses of this… God fulfilled what he had foretold through all the prophets that his Messiah would suffer.”

You denied the Holy and Righteous One. That’s Peter’s way of saying that you had the Messiah right in front of you, the one who had been promised for thousands of years, the one you’ve been expecting… and you killed him. In fact, you killed the source of life. You killed God. God was right here, he walked among you and you killed him.

This is pretty bold stuff. But Peter grounds all of this in the way he’s reading the Old Testament. God spoke about this through his holy prophets. This was foretold. And Peter’s not just talking about prophecy. He’s talking about all the events and stories of the Old Testament. He quotes Moses and He quotes God’s promise to Abraham. He says God fulfilled what he foretold. And here’s what we are supposed to see in both quotes: Promises.

Promise: God will raise up for you a prophet like me.

Promise: All the families of the earth will be blessed through your offspring.

I was taught all my life to look at verses like what Peter is quoting and think of the crystal ball. Those are predictions, and wouldn’t you know it, God knew the future and so God was able to help Moses and Abraham look through their crystal balls. No. It goes much deeper than that, it goes way beyond that… those are Promises. That’s Gospel. That is God promising through Moses. That is God making a promise to Abraham. That is God say this WILL happen.

Bible predictions vs. Bible promises

Predictions are accidental occurrences, and the way we talk about it, we make God out to be some arbitrarily contrived god who has to prove himself by making sure that he predictions come true, like this is a fairy tale. Our God is a God of Promise. All his promises in the Old Testament were fulfilled in Jesus. Jesus was and is the true meaning of those promises. Jesus not only made good on the Promises, but He fulfilled or became the actualization of those promises in real time and space. Jesus is himself both the Living Promise and the fulfillment of all of God’s Promises.

Promises are guaranteed as if they were fact. And our salvation, our lives, our very existence is grounded, not in God’s predictions but God’s promises that we can take to the bank. Over and over and over again throughout the Bible, God is saying “I will” and “you will”. God stakes his very own existence and personhood and integrity on those promises and all of those promises are ours in Jesus.

Who Knew?

Yesterday we celebrated our third Pumpkin Patch with our city here. At one point I found myself just looking at the line of people almost in disbelief. I couldn’t have predicted this 4 years ago when we launched The Table’s worship services. This morning we are worshiping in the same space where for three years we’ve had VBS with the Boys and Girls Club right over there. This morning we sit on chairs and get goodies off of tables that were donated by the LWML.. unloaded from a truck donated by the LWML. We couldn’t have predicted this kind of grace. We weren’t promised this kind of grace. But we were promised one thing: wherever Word and Sacrament are preached and delivered, I will be there. I will show up. I will give you grace. I will give you salvation, I will give you forgiveness. Again. And Again. and again… and this morning he has fulfilled that promise. Again.

Our Bibles… from Genesis to Revelation… have this rhythm of promise and fulfillment. Over and over and over. I will. I did. and I do. Every time we show up here, we are part of that same story of God making Good on his Promise and fulfilling those Promises in Jesus FOR US, in us, and through us.

Let’s Pray.

The Table

This right here is Promise and Fulfillment. Jesus says this is my body. This is my blood. That’s Promise. And when we receive his body and his blood in faith, that is Jesus’ fulfillment of that Promise FOR YOU. In real time and in real space.

(note about St Paul kids)

Benediction

Numbers 6:24–26 “May the Lord bless you and protect you;

may the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you;

may the Lord look with favor on you and give you peace.”