Proving That Jesus is the Christ From the Old Testament. Part 10

[Repeat of series introduction that began on 17 December 2023: Where would you go today in the Old Testament to argue that Jesus is the Christ? There’s so much to this that cannot be dismissed. We’re given in many ways what the Messiah would be like, what his character would be, how he’d be received (even by different people), what he’d do, how he’d redeem, that we’d have his lineage, what he’d say, how it would all end, how he’d come and more. So much, and we see it all done in just one man! How would you know that he is the promised Messiah? Jesus’ birth, life, suffering, and glorification all demonstrate the facets of his excellent work. Jesus himself asked two of his disciples the same question I could ask you today, and then went to the same source to explain it that I’d like to go to as well in this series: “Was it not necessary for the Christ to suffer these things and to enter into His glory?” Then beginning with Moses and with all the prophets, He explained to them the things concerning Himself in all the Scriptures.” Luke 24:26-27. Jesus had to suffer to then enter into his glory he said. With this premise, he goes through some measure of the 39 books of the Old Testament revealing himself to them thereby. This is the same Old Testament we have today. I wish we were given the transcript of that talk, but God didn’t wish to give it. But can we see it? Many historical events in the Scriptures could be fulfilled by men and women, but no one but Jesus (Messiah) could fulfill them all. The Lord himself demonstrated that he was and is the Christ, and our New Testament reflects that its writers were well aware of this. The clear approach of the Apostles was to argue the same from the Bible that Jesus read- the 39 books we now call the Old Testament. To know what it means that Jesus is the Christ is to show the fulness of God’s revelation to mankind in the New Testament in him. In the Old Testament, God said he’d defeat sin and death; the New Testament shows us that work done. There are so many ways to talk of this. So many passages. I won’t exhaust them, but in this series, I wish to examine some of these passages. These passages are how I would prove Jesus is the Christ from the Old Testament].

It is Jesus- as a member of the triune God- who Abraham followed out of Ur around 2100 BC. Around AD 30, some 2,000 years after my father Abraham had lived and died, Jesus said things to people living in his own day like, “Your father Abraham was overjoyed that he would see My day, and he saw it and rejoiced.” John 8:56. If there is indeed one specific one, we’re not told exactly which day it was that Jesus is talking about here. We’re left therefore to speculate if we like. Is this just a general reference to all of Abraham’s life (like “back in his day”) when God found him in today’s southern Iraq? Or is he talking about Genesis 15:6 where we see that Abraham, “believed in the Lord; and He credited it to him as righteousness.”? Was it the day of the promise of his Abraham’s long-awaited miraculous son Isaac that Jesus spoke of? Perhaps. Paul does make a great deal of this in Romans 4 and Galatians 3. Was it instead just before God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah and physically appeared to Abraham with two angels in Genesis 18 that’s in view? Jesus did say to them in John 8 that Abraham did not seek to kill him. Does this presume a Christophany such as what we had when Sodom and Gomorrah were ended? Or was it long after both of these events when Abraham was called to sacrifice his own beloved son Isaac on Mt. Moriah? Surely this is possible. It could even be, since Abraham would have been in what was called “Abraham’s Bosom” since his own death, that when he saw the Son being born in Bethlehem, that that was the day he rejoiced to see. I don’t know for sure, but if I had to choose the day Jesus spoke of in John 8 above, I’d have to say that I think it was in fact in Genesis 15:6 when Abraham was given the promise of Isaac, a son from Sarah. Paul taught that this was the Gospel of Jesus Christ being preached to Abraham. He says in Galatians 3:8: “The Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, “All the nations will be blessed in you.” This is a reference to Genesis 15.

All of this foreshadowing of Jesus to come would necessarily be through what? Through many births and their subsequent deaths. Christ’s incarnation, a birth through the curses of childbearing for his sinful (like all other people) mother Mary, would be how the Gospel preached to Abraham would be fulfilled. We’ve seen that now in these last days for the last 2,000 years. There were all the births, all the deaths, and then The Birth, death, and Resurrection of the Son, a son of promises far greater than those Abraham himself would have comprehended in his day. Jesus, “…humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death: death on a cross.” Philippians 2:8. He was born of Abraham’s line to live and suffer to bring about the fulness of that plan. Cf. Ephesians 1:9-11.

The promises of God from the day of Abraham and his son Isaac point us through millions of deaths to Jesus. Jesus, unlike Isaac, would conquer death through his life’s perfection. He is the son of promise Isaac foreshadowed in myriad ways. The knowledge of all this comes through Jesus’ Resurrection. He had to suffer to bring that in. He was like that ram caught in the thicket, a raised up Isaac even if Abraham had to do what he was tested to do, etc. This was all the plan. A plan through a birth that brings about new birth for all who believe.

God bless!!!

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