Teaching Chapter

The Beginning in Light of the Ending

Have you ever seen the movie The Sixth Sense? It's the one with Bruce Willis and Haley Joel Osment, who whispers through trembling little lips, "I see dead people." I know; it's a strange movie. Honestly, it is not my kind of movie. When I first saw the previews for it, I wrote it off as out of my preferred realm of reality. But my husband, David, said it was one of his favorite movies of all time, and so when it was finally free on TV, for the sake of marital harmony and togetherness, I watched it with him. And I have to say, I came to understand his appreciation for it. If you haven't seen it, go rent it this weekend and see for yourself what I mean. No spoiler alert needed here; I won't tell you how it turns out.

Suffice it to say that The Sixth Sense is one of those movies that, when you come to the end, you immediately think, Okay, I need to watch that again. That's because something so significant is revealed at the end of the movie that you realize this knowledge will change everything you thought you were seeing and understanding throughout the entire movie as you watched it the first time. You want to watch it a second time with the knowledge of what was hinted at but not revealed until the end. It's like when you get to the end of a whodunit, and you are so surprised by who did it that you want to watch it again to look for the clues you missed.

So why am I starting a book about Genesis talking about the movie The Sixth Sense? Because it illustrates why we want to start our study of Genesis at the end of Jesus's earthly ministry. Something is revealed in a final scene of Jesus's life that makes us want to go back to the very beginning of God's story and read it again in light of what we know now. Now that we've seen clearly what was hinted at but hidden, we want to start at the beginning and trace the story, looking for what we missed the first time because we didn't even know to look for it.

So today we begin at the end, and next week we'll continue at the beginning! We start at the end because it was at the end of his earthly ministry that Jesus himself made clear to his disciples that the whole story of the Old Testament, beginning in Genesis, had always been all about him.

Seeing Jesus

Let's look at the final chapter of Luke's Gospel, Luke 24. The chapter begins with several women going to Jesus's tomb. Even though Jesus had repeatedly told his disciples that he was going to "suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised" (Luke 9:22), when the women saw that his body was gone and reported it to the apostles, reminding them that he had said he would rise, the apostles didn't believe them.

Right after Luke records this finding at the tomb, he tells us about two of Jesus's followers who were walking to the village of Emmaus. Likely they were walking home after traveling to Jerusalem for Passover. After witnessing what happened to Jesus in Jerusalem, they were confused and sad and disappointed that the one they thought had come to save them had been humiliated and crucified, and, in their estimation, soundly defeated by the political and religious establishment.

As they walked and talked, Jesus came alongside and walked with them. I don't know why they didn't recognize him except that Luke tells us "their eyes were kept from recognizing him" (Luke 24:16). Evidently God purposefully wanted to keep them from recognizing Jesus, perhaps so that they would not become so caught up in him actually being alive that they would not be able to think through what he had to teach them. Jesus asked them what they were talking about, and they explained that they were talking about Jesus of Nazareth,

a man who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, and how our chief priests and rulers delivered him up to be condemned to death, and crucified him. But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things happened. Moreover, some women of our company amazed us. They were at the tomb early in the morning, and when they did not find his body, they came back saying that they had even seen a vision of angels, who said that he was alive. Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but him they did not see. (Luke 24:19–24)

"We had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel," they said, with obvious disappointment. They thought they had understood who Jesus was and what he came to do. But because they actually misunderstood who he was and what he came to do, they completely missed him!

Do you think you have Jesus figured out? Have you, at times, found yourself profoundly disappointed because Jesus has not done what you expected him to do?

Sometimes, when we think we've got Jesus all figured out, we simply can't hear or can't see...