The End from the Beginning

My wife shared a dream that she had the other night. In the later part of the dream, we were preaching together. I was trying to explain from Genesis through Revelation how everything fits together to give a whole picture. She would fill in for when I was looking up Scripture references with a "holiness message." The two worked side by side, though slightly different subjects. She kept hearing that I was at an ultimate moment to begin to share the holiness of God, and I continued to press forward to express the whole of the message. She mentioned that there was a battle: do we stop because we know that the people can only handle so much and speak to them about God and His holiness, or should we continue to express the whole picture so they can essentially take home the leftovers and feed from it for the next few days?

The dream got me thinking. I don't typically speak in a way to expound a certain text. As much as I love to hear teachers express the depths of this or that passage, I am more of one that finds beauty in how this text is a part of the whole, and here is how it all fits together. I'm not sure what exactly that means for me, but I do know that it seems like it gets me in trouble sometimes...

T. Austin Sparks had said that if we want to know the end, we should look for it in the beginning. God somehow in His genius (if there only were a bigger word than that!) is able to express the end from the beginning. He is able to expound to us something that we should be looking for at the end from the beginning. The book of Genesis and the book of Acts are expressions of God's ultimate plans of redemption. From there, we read the expression, "the Law and the Prophets." This was an idiom to say, "from Genesis through Revelation," basically meaning the whole Bible.

A lot of times we find ourselves captivated by this or that speculative kind of teaching. It might be end times related (some of the craziest ideas come from that), or it might be the notion that the 10 tribes of Northern Israel (Ephraim) were "lost." Then people want to go hunt them down to come to a conclusion that we're Israeli no matter where we were born. Even the rapper Chingy has had the "epiphany" that he is somehow of one of the lost tribes.

How do we keep from such foolishness? How do we keep from such nonsense as the prosperity gospel? How do we discern truth when all about us are chaotic statements and truisms (cliches)?

It takes a couple things. It is expressed in 2 Thessalonians 2:10 that it takes a love of the truth. But what is truth? Know this: the Holy Spirit is called the Spirit of Truth that will lead us into "all truth." We must love the Holy Spirit and what it would teach us. That being said, it also takes discernment to know what is being spoken by the Holy Sprit and what is being spoken from our own arrogance or possibly even demonic voices. That is where the next thing comes in: we must have a solid foundation of the "whole counsel of God."

What is that whole counsel of God? It is the whole picture from Genesis through Revelation. However, contrary to saying that it means we know how it all fits together, we need to be able to see the heart, intention, and character of God from Genesis through Revelation. It all expresses Him, and any other foundation which is Christ is a false foundation.

While considering these things in my heart, I came to realize how much I actually do love the Law and the Prophets. Not as the idiom of the whole Bible only, but even the literal Law and Prophets. My favorite Old Testament books are Genesis, Leviticus, Deuteronomy, Psalms, Isaiah, Daniel, and Zechariah. How ridiculous is that? I might be the only person I've ever met that "rejoices" each time that Leviticus comes around for my daily reading...

Yet, it is these very books - the five books of Moses - that give us the basis for all of Scriptural understanding. Every statement in the New Testament has its origin from the five books of Moses. It all filters from that foundation. Christ is as the heart of the books of Moses, and if we cannot recognize Him there then we cannot recognize Him. He is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Any other depiction of Christ is not truth. It is from that understanding of Christ in the Old Testament - as expressed through the truth of the Holy Spirit - that we have come to a place where we cannot be deceived. Nothing can fool you if you see Christ through everything.

I think this might be why I am so bent on expressing the entire Bible every time I speak... There is something that is expressed in seeing Jesus in even Leviticus - that He is our sacrifice and offering, whether burnt offering, peace offering, wave offering, meal offering, or otherwise. When you can go from seeing Jesus in the books of Moses to expressing Him in the prophetic Scriptures and eschatology, you are beginning to lay down the foundation necessary for the Church to be built upon. This is beautiful, and I think it might even be the "beauty of holiness."