In the early days of DVDs, there was a thing that happened sometimes with longer films: they would make a double-sided disc, so that you’d watch half of the film and then flip the disc over to watch the second half. I know of a couple who liked to buy old DVDs, and they watched the second half of a film by accident, assuming it was the first half. They enjoyed the second half of the film because they didn’t realise it was the second half—they thought it was a bit odd.
It could be a bit like that for us if we simply read the Gospels without realising that a lot has come before. In fact, it’s not just the first half that’s come before—it’s the first three-quarters. The first three-quarters of the Bible is the Old Testament, and there are so many prophecies that speak of what the New Testament’s purpose is. If you don’t know those prophecies, you’re missing out.
So, go back to the books of Moses with a renewed sense of meaning, looking for Christ in those books. But then, as you read the Gospels, may it be that you read those books with more of a sense of the idea that Jesus here is not merely working on a whim, but rather is ministering within a framework that is replete with meaning. He’s working as the one who was prophesied thousands of years before he came because he’s doing the work of God the Father.
Most of all, make sure you see that Jesus is Lord. There’s nothing more important than that. He is the Lord of the burning bush; he’s the Lord who brought about the ten plagues; he’s the Lord who brought his people across the Red Sea; he’s the Lord who met with his people on the mountain. Now, he was not yet in the flesh in the book of Exodus, and yet he is the same Lord whom Moses prophesied. Make sure that that is what you believe, and make sure you are celebrating, most of all, his fulfilment of the Passover—the fact that he is the Lord who is the Lamb, who has come to die for his people’s sins as the substitute, taking the penalty for sins upon himself, instead of his people being the firstborn son who dies instead of his people.
