Have you ever found it a bit confusing to find Jesus in the writings of the Old Testament? Amongst all those wonders and wanderings, begats and bemoaning’s, and cattle on a thousand hills, how does Jesus, Who we see more clearly in the gospels and other New Testament books, fit into the first two-thirds of our Bibles?
The whole Bible is the story of God’s provision for salvation and deliverance for lost mankind. Unfolding the story of this miraculous provision has been called “The Scarlet Thread of Redemption.”
The Bible is a book of redemption. The idea of redemption is twofold: it refers to deliverance, and it refers to the price paid for that deliverance, a ransom. We’re redeemed from the penalty of sin and the power of evil by the price Jesus paid on the cross for us. We’re also redeemed to a new freedom from sin, a new relationship to God, and a new life of love and appropriating that atonement for our sins. The whole Bible, both Old and New Testaments, is the story of the mighty, redemptive atonement of Jesus for you and me. His blood sacrifice is the ransom paid for our deliverance from sin. Jesus took our sinful nature upon Himself so He might satisfy the demands of the law when we could not, and God the Father accepts that sacrifice as payment for the debt we owe.
The work of Jesus has a threefold focus. First, it’s closely associated with forgiveness since we receive forgiveness through the redemptive price of Christ’s death. Second, it involves justification since deliverance establishes us in a restored position of favor before God. Third, it promises final deliverance from the power of sin at the coming of the Lord.
So let’s take a look at the very beginning of the “scarlet thread” and how it runs from Genesis all the way through our Bible to the Revelation.
The Creation and the Fall: The Garden of Eden must have been a beautiful, perfect and pure place, a paradise provided by God for our first parents. But when Eve and Adam sinned by eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they were afraid and hid themselves from God. When God looked at their coverings of fig leaves, He said this will not do! There was no way that covering their sin (atonement) could be woven by human hands. Therefore, somewhere in that garden, God Himself took a beautiful, innocent animal and slaughtered it right before the eyes of Eve and Adam. As He skinned it and the ground drank up its innocent blood, God used its coat to cover the shame and nakedness of our parents in Eden. This was the first sacrifice, and it was offered by the hand of God Himself.
Then God told satan the tempter, “I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your seed and her seed; it shall bruise your head and you shall bruise His heel.” (Genesis 3:15) Here are the first words about Calvary, where Jesus suffered.
So the Scarlet Thread of Redemption began…the story of miraculous atonement and sacrifice for our sins.
To be continued…
* The above is summarized from The King James Open Bible Expanded Edition (The Old Time Gospel Hour), 1333-1336, 1985 by Thomas Nelson, Inc.