With 40 authors, writing in three different languages, over a 1600 year period on three continents there is still a common thread throughout the whole Bible from Genesis all the way through to Revelation. That common thread is Jesus. Let’s take a look at how this is true by looking at several examples in three different categories.

   On page three of the Bible is the first mention of a Savior (Genesis 1:15) and also the first indication of how salvation was to come about. Genesis 1:21 says that God made tunics of skin to clothe Adam and Eve. In the midst of cursing all of creation God still had mercy on them by making clothes to cover their shame.

   Throughout the Bible God the Son was the person of the trinity who interacted physically with His creation so He would have been the one making the clothing. In order to make tunics of skin God would have had to kill an animal. Christians like to think that it was a lamb because Jesus is referred too as the Lamb of God but scripture does not actually say this. At that moment God was establishing how salvation was to take place by the sacrifice of an innocent life to cover sin.

   Adam passed down the practice of sacrificing animals to his children as we can see in Genesis 4:4, “Abel also brought of the first-born of his flock and of their fat. And the Lord respected Abel and his offering.” Noah sacrificed animals as seen in Genesis 8:20 and Job did the same in Job 42:8.

   Fast forward one thousand years to the time of Moses and we see God making laws and statutes to bring about the Jewish culture. The Jews had a different God, a God who loved and cared for them, contrasting thousands of pagan gods who were indifferent and silent toward their people. Their clothes were different so they could be easily recognized and Jewish men were different in their physical bodies because of the law of circumcision. God was setting apart His own people so that the rest of the world would not mistake whose they were.

   When God rescued the Jews from the harsh slavery that Pharaoh subjected them to (Exodus 1:13-14) He told each family, through Moses, to sacrifice a lamb and put the blood on the door posts so they would be saved from the final plague of death because the Bible tells us that life is in the blood (Leviticus 17:11). Later on we are told that the lamb must be a first-born male without blemish and just like Jewish culture points toward Jesus, He was a first-born male without blemish, indicating He was without sin.

  

   One of the greatest affirmations to the Bible is prophecy. Prophecy, in the Bible, is a foretelling of the future either by God Himself or by God speaking through a person. The first prophecy in the Bible is Genesis 1:15 when God says a savior will come from a descendant of Eve who is the mother of all the living (Genesis 3:20). There are hundreds of prophecies, many of which have not come true, but most in the Old Testament point us to salvation and how we should know who the savior is.

   One that is very compelling is in the Psalms and was written by King David 1000 years before Jesus lived. In Psalm 22 David is crying out to God because he is in a very low place in his life. In describing himself he says that his hands and feet are pierced and men cast lots for his clothing; very disjointed statements and seemingly out of context to the rest of the Psalm. These two prophecies are later fulfilled by Jesus in John chapter 19.

   A mathematician named Peter W. Stoner calculated the odds of any one person, in the last 2000 years, fulfilling just eight of these prophecies and the odds turned out to be 1 in 10 to the 17th power (1 with 17 zeros). He described those odds in this way: Cover the state of Texas with silver dollars two feet high. Now mark just one silver dollar and toss it in and mess them all up. Blindfold a person and have them select only one silver dollar from the whole state. Picking the one marked silver dollar are the same odds as one person fulfilling all eight prophecies, and that’s just eight. The odds of one person fulfilling every Messianic prophecy are in the many trillions and yet Jesus did just that.

 

   There are notable similarities to Jesus in other people who are in the Bible. Moses led the Israelites out of captivity from Egypt and into the Promised Land (2 Corinthians 2:14). Boaz is a close relative redeemer (Titus 2:13-14). Jonah is a picture of Jesus lying in the tomb for three days and three nights (Matthew 12:40).

   There is a similarity to Jesus in the person of David, the young boy who killed Goliath the giant and later became king of Israel. Before these things took place he was a shepherd for his father Jesse. A shepherd would tend to the sheep but it was more than just looking after them. Shepherds had intimate knowledge of the characteristics of sheep and they knew each as an individual. They knew where to find food for them, they knew how to keep them safe from poisonous plants and pesky insects, and they knew how to protect them from predators. David saved his own flock from a bear and a lion.

   The Bible describes Jesus as the good shepherd who lays down his life for the “sheep” referring to all of us (John 10:11). David wrote Psalm 23 which describes how a shepherd cares for his flock. For a closer look, there is a wonderful book called “23” written by Eran Holt which goes into more detail about how Jesus cares for us within the context of a shepherd and his flock of sheep.

   Lastly there was a test given by God to Abraham to observe his faithfulness which, at first, is extremely disturbing but, in the context of salvation, ends up giving us a crucial look at Gods perspective in this matter. Abraham and his wife Sarah could not have children but God said Abraham’s offspring would be as numerous as the stars (Genesis 15:5). When they were very old they had a son and named him Isaac and a few years later God told Abraham to sacrifice Isaac on the altar.

   Let me be clear that in today’s culture this is beyond offensive and even in Abraham’s, but not entirely uncommon. We need to understand that Abraham came from a pagan culture that sacrificed their children to false gods so it wasn’t outside the realm of his comprehension; however, I’m sure we can imagine how distraught he was to receive this command. But Abraham knew God’s character and he tells us in Genesis 22:8 that God would provide the sacrifice.

   So Abraham took his only son Isaac to the mountain where God had told him to go and prepared the altar with wood for the burnt offering. He then bound his son and placed him on the altar. If you have children I’m sure you can feel the gut wrenching pain of this act and I know Abraham felt the same as he told his son how much he loved him, one last time, and then raised the knife with tears blinding his vision (Genesis 22). At that moment the Angel of the Lord said, “Abraham, Abraham! Do not lay your hand on the lad, or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me.” And then God said to Himself, “When the time is right, I will sacrifice my only son Jesus for you.”