Jack of Nazareth?

24 is the greatest show ever. Ever. Period. Ever.

You need to know this.

With the fifth and arguably best season of the hit television show 24 now concluded and season six ready to explode TV screens worldwide come mid-January, Jack Bauer can take a much needed shower, get something to eat, and power up his cell phone battery (which magically lasts forever). At the risk of sounding blasphemous, I would like to offer the suggestion that perhaps 24 is incredibly popular because Jack Bauer is a lot like Jesus, as the following correlations indicate:

• Jack and Jesus are both dudes who worked in construction.


• Jack and Jesus have disciples and Jack's disciples have names like Chloe, Michelle, Bill, and Tony.


• Jack and Jesus do not lie and can be trusted to accomplish whatever they promise.


• Jack and Jesus both oppose evil and seek to bring forth a glorious shalom world, free of tyranny and evildoers.


• Jack and Jesus were both betrayed by a close friend who ended up dying as a result of his sin.


• Jack and Jesus are both saviors willing to lay down their life for those they love.


• Jack and Jesus were both resurrected from death; Jack was essentially put to death to fool the Chinese government and then resuscitated.

24 is easily the best show on television despite the many reasons it conceivably should not be. First, the show is long, lasting an hour a week. Second, the show is complicated and unless you rent the DVDs and begin in season one and work your way up through season five, the storyline really makes no sense. Third, it is just the type of kill-the-bad-guys, do-whatever-it-takes-to-defeat-evil, macho, alpha-male, action-hero kind of show that our less than manly culture would see as too violent, too intense, and too dudely.

But the show works for the same reasons it could have failed. And it is also a great case for expository Bible teaching. While that may sound like a leap, think about it. Expository Bible teaching requires going through a book of the Bible to tell its story over the course of many, many weeks so that characters, setting, theme and such are established just like 24. Expository Bible teaching requires a masculine dude named Jesus to be presented each week as the hero/savior who is willing to risk His own life to defeat evil and rescue those He loves. And expository Bible teaching should be long, let's say 42 minutes on DVD, around an hour if seen live, and take the time to show the horrors and complications of life on the earth under the curse with wildly unpredictable storylines that God inspired to be told.

cc: Mark Driscoll