Christ, the Golden Key and Thread of Scripture

“Grace Gems” (gracegems.org) recently carried this devotional written by Octavius Winslow. Since it is a good follow-up to our first post today, I thought I would include it for this Monday. May we remember this truth too as we read the most important book we could ever read – God’s book, the holy Scriptures.

Jesus is the one great theme both of the Old Testament and the New. The whole Bible is designed to testify of Christ, “The Scriptures point to Me!” John 5:39

In Christ the Messiah, in Jesus the Savior, in the Son of God the Redeemer–all the truths of the Bible center.

To Him all the types and shadows point!

Of Him all the prophecies give witness!

All the glory of the Scriptures, from Genesis to Revelation–culminates at the cross of Christ!

The Bible would be an inexplicable mystery apart from Christ, who unfolds and explains it all.

He is the golden Key which unlocks the divine treasury of Scriptural revelation!

Until He is seen, the Bible is, in a sense–a great mystery. But when He is found, it is a glorious revelation. Every mystery is opened, every enigma explained, every discrepancy harmonized, and every truth and page, sentence and word, quickened with a life and glowing with a light flowing down from the throne of the Eternal God.

Christ is the substance of the Gospel.
All its divine doctrines,
all its holy precepts,
all its gracious instructions,
all its precious promises,
all its glorious hopes–
meet, center, and fill up their entire compass in Jesus!

He is the Alpha and the Omega of the Bible, from the first verse in Genesis–to the last verse in Revelation.

Oh, study the Scriptures of truth with a view of learning Christ.

Do not study the Bible as a mere history.
Do not read it as a mere poem.
Do not search it as a book of science.
It is all that, but infinitely more.
The Bible is the Book of Jesus!
It is a Revelation of Christ!

Christ is the golden thread which runs through the whole!

Blessed Lord Jesus! I will read and study and dig into the Scriptures to find and learn more of You!
You, Immanuel, are the fragrance of this divine box of precious ointment.
You are the beauteous gem sparkling in this divine cabinet.
You are the Tree of life planted in the center of this divine garden.
You are the Ocean whose stream quickens and nourishes all who draw water out of this divine well of salvation.
The Bible is all about You!

Two Thumbs Down by R.C. Sproul, Jr.

This month’s Tabletalk (Ligonier Ministries) devotional has as its theme “The New Testament Epistles” and the feature articles deal with the various letters written to the church of Christ in the first century. R.C.Sproul, Jr. has a related article in his rubric “Seek Ye First” under the above title. It has to do with the effects modern technology has had on our ability to read, not only works like Calvin’s Institutes, but also Scripture itself. I will let him “speak”; may we listen to what he has to say. But more importantly, may we heed his counsel at the end, and read and listen to the Word of God.

Follow the link below to read his entire article:

Perhaps stranger even than our growing ignorance is our concomitant growing confidence in our wisdom. Instead of looking to the ancients as our betters, we see them as hopelessly undereducated rubes. Reading the epistles in the Bible, however, ought to disabuse us of our foolish pride. We might be tempted to escape this conclusion by remembering our doctrine of inspiration. Paul, Peter, John, all the authors of all the epistles had some rather potent help along the way. When the omniscient God of heaven and earth is superintending your writing, you can certainly reach depths of wisdom that you would not have reached on your own. Communication, however, is a two-way street. What we learn from reading the epistles is not just the brain power behind the writing of them, but the brain power behind the reading of them. Like Calvin’s Institutes, the New Testament epistles were written by and large for laypeople, pew sitters, regular folk.

The readers of these letters, while they were certainly blessed to have pastors and teachers to help them understand, likely did not sit down over the course of a year or three to dissect these letters, word by word. They didn’t spend a month of Sundays on 1 Corinthians 1:1a, before daring to move on the next month to 1:1b. Instead, they received these letters as letters. They understood them as letters. They submitted to them as letters.

As education gadfly John Taylor Gatto has wisely argued, we are being dumbed down by our own state school systems. That is 1984. But we are also dumbing ourselves down by refusing to sit, be still, and to read reasoned discourse that moves sequentially from one thought to the next, communicated in complete sentences. That is our Brave New World. Our calling then is not to live as the citizens under 1984. Nor should we see ourselves as the vapid consumers of Brave New World. Instead we are called to seek first a different kingdom. Instead we are to seek His righteousness. We find both in the Word of Him who is the Word. May we drink deeply of that Word, that we might walk rightly with that Word.

Two Thumbs Down by R.C. Sproul, Jr. | Reformed Theology Articles at Ligonier.org.