Part 03 of 5

The Whole Thing Is One Slow Reveal

You know the fog on a bathroom mirror? After a hot shower. You wipe it with your hand. And you can sort of see a face. A shape. You know someone's there. But not clearly. Not yet. Hold onto that.

Because Paul - the guy who wrote a big chunk of the New Testament - he says that's what this is like. Reading the Bible. Trying to see God. "We see in a mirror. Dimly" (1 Corinthians 13:12). We'll come back to him.

Maybe you've opened this book before. And it felt like fog. Names you couldn't track. Rules that made no sense. A God who seemed like one thing over here - and something totally different over there. You're not crazy. You're not dumb. There's a reason it felt like that. And there's a way through. Let me show you. With a story. Near the end of Luke (Luke 24:13-35).

Two people. Walking. Out of Jerusalem, toward a little village called Emmaus. Seven miles. Long walk. And they are wrecked.

Now - the text names one of them. Cleopas. The other one, it leaves open. So picture them however you want. Me? I picture a husband and wife. Walking home from the worst weekend of their lives.

Because their guy just died. Jesus. The one they thought was the one. The one who was gonna fix everything. And instead the Romans nailed him to a cross on Friday - and that was that.

Listen to the exact words they say. "We had hoped... he was the one" (Luke 24:21). Had. Past tense. That's the sound of a dream dying.

And as they're walking - a stranger falls into step beside them. Asks what they're talking about. And they can't believe it. "You're the only guy in the country who doesn't know?" So they tell him. The whole thing.

And the stranger says something wild. He basically says - you've been reading it wrong. And then. This is the part. He starts at the very beginning - Genesis, Exodus, the first books, the ones tied to Moses - and he works forward. Through the history books. Through Ruth. Through the big prophets, Isaiah and Jeremiah, all of them. The whole shelf. Their own Scriptures. The stuff they'd read their entire lives. And he shows them - it was pointing here. All of it. Pointing to exactly what just happened. Seven miles of that.

They get to the village. It's getting dark. They beg him - stay. Eat with us. So they sit down. And the stranger... takes the bread. Blesses it. Breaks it. And - boom. Their eyes open. It's him. It's Jesus. Alive. And then he's gone.

And here's what gets me. In that split second - how did they know? How'd they know it was him? Because. He always did that. The bread. The blessing. The breaking. They'd watched his hands do that a hundred times. It was his move. His signature.

You know your mother by her footsteps in the hallway before she's even in the room. You know your best friend's laugh from across a loud, crowded party. You'd know the person you love by the way they say your name when nobody else is around, or the exact weight of their hand in yours. You don't need to see the face. The signature is enough. They knew him by the bread.

Okay. Back to Paul. Back to the foggy mirror. "For now we see in a mirror, dimly. But then - face to face" (1 Corinthians 13:12). Here's what he means. Right now - on this side of the story - nobody sees God in HD. We get a reflection. A shape in the fog. We know "in part." And that's not a bug. That is the whole design of this book.

So here's the big idea. The one thing I want you to walk out with. The Bible is not a rulebook. It's not a pile of random life lessons. It's one long, slow reveal. Of one main character. And that character is Jesus. He's the one the whole thing is heading toward. The one it all holds together in.

Now - careful. That does not mean you play detective and hunt for a secret Jesus code in every single verse. It doesn't mean you skip what these stories actually meant to the people who first heard them. The Old Testament is Israel's story. And it matters. On its own terms. But the whole thing is aimed. Like an arrow. At him.

So you don't start in the fog. You start where the fog is thinnest. Where you can see his face the clearest. You learn his face there - and then you go back. And you start to recognize him. The family resemblance. Running all the way back through the story.

It's like Star Wars. You don't start with Episode One. Trade negotiations and tax disputes. Come on. You start with the original. Four, five, six. You meet Luke. You meet Vader. And then - the reveal. "I am your father."

And now. Now you go back and watch the prequels. And every scene hits different. Because you know who these people become. You couldn't see it the first time. Now you can't un-see it. Same book. Same move. Meet Jesus where he's clearest. Then read the whole thing again.

So where do we start? Where's the fog thinnest? There's one book. And it opens with the exact same three words as the very beginning of everything. "In the beginning."