Introduction: Son of Man Series

Introduction to Study Series

From cover to cover, the Bible is telling one consistent story. The storyline of the Bible is about the unfolding plan of how the Creator is rescuing his creation through the Christ. As the mission statement of the great team at The Bible Project states: “The Bible is a unified story that leads to Jesus.”

Unfortunately, many people view the Bible as an old religious book that is meant to reform our behavior through rituals and rule keeping. But in the words of Ray Lubeck:

“Following the Bible is not about reforming our behaviors by strict rule keeping. Rather, it is an invitation to our imagination, offering to us whole new ways of seeing and being in the world in the ways that God describes it. God does not liberate us in Christ by giving us more and different laws, but by enabling us to look at literally everything from a different perspective, with a new reference point for reality.” (Read the Bible book)

To put that another way, the Bible is offering us a new worldview and a new way of life by inviting us to participate in the epic story that it is telling. It is so much more than embracing a new religion or lifestyle.

The Bible traces an unfolding drama that is taking place through real historical events with real-life human characters playing real roles. However, because of these characters and events, many people end up reading the Bible as a collection of stories that give us moral lessons or heroes to emulate. Think of the way that many children’s Bibles portray the story of Samson as if he is some sort of ancient Superman and the story of David as if he’s the brave little boy that’s not afraid of the big bad giant. We individualize these stories and isolate them instead of realizing that these stories and their characters are all part of a greater underlying story that is the epic story of the Christ.

And so that is the motivation behind this five-part study series that we’ve entitled, “The Christ: Foreshadowed and Fulfilled.” In this study, we are going to look at five different different figures from the Old Testament narrative and see how their stories foreshadow what would eventually be fulfilled in the Christ of the New Testament.

Our purpose in this study is not to give you an exhaustive account of how all the different stories in the Bible point to the one main story. We’ll leave that for you to explore and discover on your own. But our goal in this series is to give you a deeper appreciation for the Bible as a unified story and a fresh new perspective that leads you to join in and actually participate in what God is doing and has been doing since the beginning of human history.

We need to rediscover that the Bible is so much more than a religious book about personal salvation from a sin problem. Yes, it definitely gives us the incredible good news about God’s mercy and grace and love and forgiveness that saves us from sin and that gives us a right standing with God, but we need to see how this fits under the umbrella of the even bigger story that the Bible is telling. And part of that bigger story is that the promised son of Eve who would rescue the creation has come and is currently ruling over the creation.

We must rediscover that the Bible is so much more than a religious book about personal salvation from a sin problem. Yes, there is the incredible good news about God’s mercy and grace and love and forgiveness that saves us from sin and that gives us a right standing with God, but we need to see how this fits under the umbrella of the even bigger story that the Bible is telling. The Bible is not primarily a book about how to go heaven when you die. The Bible is a book that tells the big story of how the Creator is rescuing his creation through the Christ. And as we will see throughout the rest of this series, our hope is not to leave earth and one day go to heaven but rather to partner with God in bringing heaven to earth.

The Bible is quite possibly one of the most misunderstood and most misused works of literature in all of human history. And perhaps one of the biggest reasons why the Bible is so often misunderstood is because many readers fail to realize that from cover to cover the Bible is trying to tell you one big epic story. Many readers tend to only see the Bible as a collection of ancient religious texts that provide some transcendent religious truths that we must implement in our daily lives today. And while there is certainly some validity to that perspective, these transcendent truths are best understood in the context of the one big story that the Bible is telling.

So what is this consistent story that the Bible is telling?

The Bible tells us the one big story of how the Creator is rescuing his creation through the Christ.