Unsearchable Riches

“The Scriptures… bear witness about me.”  ~John 5:39

Please re-read the Scripture above. Read it once more. Ok… now I want you to set a timer for five minutes. No more. No less. Got it? Here’s what you should do for those five minutes (do this before reading the rest of this devotional): write down everything you can think of concerning Jesus in the Old Testament. That’s it. Five minutes worth of thinking about Jesus as He is described, promised, foreshadowed, or intimated in the Old Testament. Ready? Go!

Five minutes is a very short time when you’re doing something enjoyable. Tell your kids to get out of the pool after only five minutes and you may illicit a noise only heard in the bowels of Middle Earth. Give me only five minutes to eat a plate of sushi and you’ll think you were at the zoo when they feed the lions. But take just five minutes to think deeply about Jesus — to write down merely five minutes worth of thoughts of Christ in the Old Testament — and suddenly five minutes seems like an eternity.

Isn’t it strange how little time we spend just thinking about Jesus? Even more surprising is how little we know of Him, especially as He’s spoken of in the Old Testament. Yet Jesus Himself tells us that the whole Bible bears witness about Him. Consider the famous Emmaus Road scene in Luke 24:13-49. There Jesus tells us that the whole Old Testament speaks of Him (the Law and the Prophets and the Psalms). Should not our hearts burn within us to seek Him there, to discover Him there, and to know everything we can about Him as He is revealed to us there in the pages of the Old Testament?

This, dear Christian, is why the Bible is never boring or mundane. This is why we (should) think of our Bibles as an inexhaustible source of delight, of joy, of hope, and of life! On each and every page of Scripture, Jesus is presented in His glory and great love. He is described as a Suffering Servant, promised as all-sufficient Savior, foreshadowed as atoning sacrifice, and intimated as the ultimate Prophet, Priest, and King. This makes every text of Scripture thrilling to our hearts and necessary to our Christian lives, for in each passage we learn of our loving Lord and what He is for us.

I want to encourage each of us to make discovering Jesus in all of Scripture our delightful duty. Finding Christ on every page will cause our hearts to glow with warmth for Him, even as those disciples on the Emmaus Road said after He departed, “Did not our hearts burn within us… while he opened to us the Scriptures?” (Luke 24:32). It will likewise increase our passion for spending time with Jesus in His Word, which brings us comfort, instruction, and assurance. There’s nothing better than time with Jesus. Even five minutes with Him is better than a thousand elsewhere.   

Rev. Kyle Lockhart, Pastor of Teaching & Spiritual Formation