Welcome to a year of reading Richard Sibbes together! The reading plan for the entire year can be accessed here. I encourage you to stick with us, allow yourself time to read, and soak in the riches of this gifted and prolific Puritan preacher. You will be edified and encouraged.
If you have trouble with how Sibbes used words, check out the Lexicons of Early Modern English for definitions from the period.
Summary/Engagement
What would the Bible be if Christ never lived? Or, what would the Bible be if there was no mention of Christ? It would be a book of laws. A book of morals and good truths. A book of history and poetry with riveting narrative. Would it be like Beowulf or The Odyssey: great fanciful tales from millennia ago. Some indeed hold the Bible to be nothing more than myth and fantasy. Non-believers argue that the Bible is inconsistent, self-contradictory, and irrelevant to modern life. Christ never lived, they say, and if he did he was just a good teacher of great moral truths like many other notable philosophers of antiquity.
However, if you spend some time in the Bible you start to realize that the Old Testament points forward to something. Who is the seed of the woman in Genesis 3:15 who will crush the head of the Serpent? What sense is there in the Bronze Serpent story, where people must merely look and be healed? And what of the sacrificial system of temple Judaism where the streets must have run red with blood from the altar. Why do we have these constant appearances of prophets, priests, and kings? What is the significance of David boldly coming forward while Israel cowered behind under the shadow of Goliath, and slaying this giant that no one from Israel could kill, much less fight?
The Old Testament points to something, specifically to someone. The Law lets all humanity know that no one is right with God in his own merit. No one can say they are without sin. Without Christ we would be left in misery, realizing we do not measure up to God’s demand for our holiness. Our lives would be one of pain and failure as we sought to reconcile ourselves to God by appeasing him with sacrifices and moralistic obedience.
But we are not left there. Christ appears in the flesh. Christ accomplishes a mission. Christ is crucified and then glorified. In light of this momentous event we now see all other things.
“What is the scope of the whole Scriptures but Christ?”
Application / Further Discussion
Christ is the Rosetta Stone of the entire Bible. He is the key by which the doors of the Scriptures are unlocked. Sibbes called him the Spirit of all truths. Christ is the seed of the woman who crushed the head of the Serpent on the cross. Christ is lifted high, like that bronze serpent of old, that we may look and be healed. Christ is our David, as we shake like frightened children, as he defeats sin.
“The kings, and priests, and prophets, they were types of Christ; all the promises they were made and fulfilled in Christ. The law ceremonial aimed at Christ; the law moral is to drive us to Christ.”
The Bible makes no sense without Christ at the center. Revelation progresses to a climactic point at Golgotha where the longing of the Old Testament promises reach their crescendo in the death and subsequent resurrection of Christ the Lord. Here, here is the point of time on which our faith is founded. Here is the key that unlocks the door of his word.
“Christ is the Spirit of the Scriptures, of all truths, of all ordinances. We may by this be able to reconcile the Scriptures, one place with another, where they seem to contradict.”
In your reading of the Bible, do you seek to understand more of Christ? Christ is not the point of every unit of text. However, every text can tell us something of ourselves, our lives, God, or human nature by which we can understand more fully Christ. When the Bible speaks of horrible things in Hosea 13:16, you will not find Christ explicitly there, but you will find the depravity of man that necessitates a savior. Taken a verse at a time the Song of Solomon doesn’t seem to point to Christ. However, as a whole, it points to the deep love between Christ and his church.
Lastly, reading the Bible without seeking Christ is indeed like reading a book of stories, or myths, or fables. Until you believe in your heart that he is who he says he is, that God raised him from the dead, and confess with your mouth, you will not know him. The Scriptures point to Christ. They find their fulfillment in Christ. They find their reconciliation in Christ. We too can find our reconciliation in Christ.
Repent. Believe.
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Last week, we read “Violence Victorious.”
Next week, we’ll read chapters 3 and 4 of Glorious Freedom: The Excellency of the Gospel Above the Law.
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