Let me start this lesson out with Paul’s text Galatians 4:4 When the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of woman, born under the Law, in order that He might redeem...mankind. The fullness of time is an interesting concept and has many layers of understanding.
I’ve taught over the years that interpreting the prophetic scriptures is like an onion. One Jewish method of interpretation concerning prophecy is called Midrash:
To the ancient Jewish mind, prophecy was a pattern which keeps repeating, a prophecy having multiple fulfillments with each fulfillment, each cycle, teaching something about the ultimate fulfillment.
It’s the concept that history repeats itself. If you have ever opened up an onion then you’ll see there are layers. Prophecy is like that in how God fulfills them. When you think you have it all figured out, God peels back a layer and you see there is more to it than what you understood.
One of the layers of the fullness of times is that God stepped into history at the right time. It was by the predetermined plan and purpose of the heavenly counsel that Christ was to step into time as the God-Man and he did it during the rule of the Roman Empire. God had promised that a Redeemer would come, who would reunite Mankind with Him by His sacrificial death. The Old Covenant, written over a 1,000-year period, contains 332 distinct predictions of the promised Redeemer and they were literally fulfilled by Jesus Christ.
Peter Stoner, who writes in "Science Speaks", computed that the coincidence of scientific probability that any one person fulfilling just eight of these prophecies, would be 10 to the 17 power or 1 in one quadrillion. I have a hard time wrapping my mind around a trillion. A trillion-dollar bills stacked on top of each other is 67,866 miles which is one fourth of the way from the earth to the moon. That’s a big number, but a quadrillion is 1,000 trillion. That’s a really big number and beyond really comprehending.
Stoner gives us an illustration to help us understand. Suppose that we take 10^17 silver dollars and lay them across the face of Texas. They will cover all of the state to a depth of two feet. Now mark one of these dollars and stir the whole mass thoroughly, all over the state. Blindfold a man and tell him that he must find the marked silver dollar. What chance would he have of getting the right one? This is the same chance the prophets had of these prophecies coming true in any one man. Amazing, but true. Jesus is the promised Messiah, the one that was foretold by 332 Old Covenant Prophecies and He is the ONLY PERSON IN HISTORY to fulfill all of them.
Let’s take a quick look at the three leadership roles in the nation of Israel under the old covenant. The three main roles were prophet, priest and king. Moses was the first prophet recorded in the bible and his brother Aaron was the first priest. Then some 350 years later you had the first king who was Saul then after him the Messianic figure king David. The high priest descended from the line of Aaron and the tribe of Levi was set apart to serve the priesthood. The priesthood was based on an ancestry and family birthright, so the priesthood stayed within the family.
Let’s look at the leadership of the king and its introduction to the nation of Israel. In looking at the history of Israel, once they were delivered from Egypt they then spent 40 years in the wilderness. After the death of Moses, they were led by Joshua to conquer and take possession of the land promised to Abraham. Once in the promised land, they were a loosely affiliated nation of 12 tribes ruled by a series of Judges that were raised up to deliver them when, as a result of their own disobedience, were taken captive by their enemies. The book of Samuel opens up with God calling him as a prophet then using him to pick a king for the nation of Israel.
God never intended for the nation of Israel to be ruled by a king, but he allowed them to have what they wanted as mentioned in I Samuel 8:7.
King David eventually became the king and he united the nation of Israel. David was the high point of Israel’s relationship with kings. David’s son Solomon became the next king and from that time forward the leadership role of the king was passed on through ancestry and family birthright, so it stayed within the family and it didn’t go really well most of the time.
The prophets were unique in the leadership role of Israel. The prophets were directly picked by God to be his spokesman. As I said, Moses is the first example of a prophet in the nation of Israel. God gave him the law of the covenant and if the children of Israel obeyed it then all would go well, but if they disobeyed then things didn’t go so well. The prophetic role of leadership to the nation of Israel was not ancestry so it wasn’t passed on through the family, but the call of the prophet came directly from God when he put his Spirit upon certain individuals. Moses was called, anointed and appointed by God to be his spokesman. The vast majority of the Old Covenant was written by the prophets.
Over the years of Israel’s history, he raised up the prophets to keep Israel in line with the covenant that was given through Moses' prophetic ministry. As I said in the last lesson the covenant law given through Moses was a fence or a tutor to protect the promises of God until the Messiah came. So when the king, priesthood or people moved outside of that fence due to following after other gods or idolatry, sexual corruption, greed or disobedience then God would raise up a prophet to speak to them.
God communicated to the prophets through dreams, visions and spoke directly to them. The prophet then communicated these messages. The prophets were also teachers of the covenant law.
Now prophets were many times misunderstood. It’s not always because they say things people don’t want to hear but sometimes because God has them do strange things to demonstrate their message. You have to learn to listen to the voice of God no matter what vessel he chooses. If you don’t learn to listen to his voice, then you can miss what He is trying to communicate to you.
God can even use an ass to speak to us. Just look at Numbers 22:28-29. The prophet Isaiah walked around prophesying barefoot with his butt showing for 3 years, God had Jeremiah put an oxen yoke on his neck and prophesy, God had Hosea marry a prostitute, He told Ezekiel to eat a scroll, lay on his side for 390 days and had him cook his food over a fire of manure. Elijah was fed by a raven in a cave and he called fire down from heaven.
As I have said, Moses laid out the terms of the covenant and gave the promises for obedience and the consequences for disobedience. All of the prophets in the Old Testament were anointed, raised up and commissioned to keep the covenant people of God focused on obeying that covenant. However, at times God would use his prophets to speak to foreign nations and foreign leaders, but the vast majority of the time they focused their prophetic ministry on the covenant nation of Israel.
As I have already said, when the nation of Israel would slip into idolatry, treat their wives or employees wrong or simply disobey their covenant with God, then God would raise up the prophets to speak. The prophetic ministry was not always focused on correcting. We see that God told Jeremiah that he would pluck up, break down, destroy, overthrow but that he would also build up and plant through his prophetic ministry. Prophets did speak positively, they gave encouraging words, gave clear guidance and were used to help establish God’s purposes. Now when the prophet had to correct the vast majority of the time the prophet was ridiculed, rejected, persecuted or even killed. Most people lash out when their sin is revealed and try to kill the messenger instead of dealing with the real issue at heart.
The book of Hebrews, which gives us the foundation for seeing the fulfillment of the Old Covenant in the Person of Christ.
Hebrews 1:1-2 says, "Long ago God spoke in many different ways to our fathers through the prophets (in visions, dreams and even face to face), telling them little by little about His plans." Over a 4000-year period God spoke through his prophets here and there about a coming man who would be a prophet above all prophets, rule as a king like David and suffer like the Passover lamb. However, before the time of Christ the nation of Israel went through what has been called the 400 years of silence.
Malachi was the last prophet who wrote the book of Malachi, the capstone to the old covenant writings. Despite the lack of Scripture detailing this period, a great deal happened and it’s important to understand it because it lays the groundwork for the context of the messianic kingdom message. Let’s look at what we do know from history to help us get a context for this 400-year period of time but before we do let’s take a quick look at Daniel.
Daniel was a Jew who was taken captive by the Babylonians when they destroyed the Jewish temple that Solomon had built in 587 BC. Through a series of events God raised up the prophet Daniel to actually be a spokesman to the most powerful man in the world at that time which was king Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. God gave Daniel prophetic insight into the future of the nations through a series of dreams. God showed Daniel that Babylon would soon be taken over by the Medo-Persians, then the Medo-Persians would be taken over by the Greeks and the Greeks would be taken over by the Romans then after that we would have one last kingdom of the Messiah.
The Messianic kingdom is the stone in Daniels prophecy cut out without hands destroying all the other kingdoms and wrapping up this current age taking us into the one to come.
In this 400-year period the Medo-Persians had conquered Babylon, so the Jews were granted some limited freedom by the Medo-Persian Empire to rebuild their temple. Under the leadership of Ezra in 458 BC and then later Nehemiah in 445 BC the Israelite remnant that journeyed back to Jerusalem experienced a moderate level of return to the covenant law, but they still did not live as God had instructed them. Israelite men were mistreating their wives, they were marrying foreign women who did not follow the covenant law and refused to honor God with their giving. In addition, the priesthood neglected the temple and their responsibility to teach God's laws.
The Jewish homeland was then taken over by the Greek Empire in 332 BC after the Medo-Persians were defeated by them. The Jews did rebuild the temple and continued to practice the Law of Moses along with the temple rituals until Syria overtook Jerusalem in 204 BC. In 171 BC, the Syrian king Antiochus Epiphanes who was a very dark man, desecrated the Jewish temple. He sacrificed a pig on the altar and dedicated the temple to the Greek god Zeus. He was an authoritarian tyrant of the worst kind.
The Jews rose up, led by the Maccabee brothers and eventually retook control of Jerusalem in 165 BC. However, it did not last long because there was a new world ruler on the scene. It was Rome and in 63 BC Israel was put under the boot of Roman domination. The 400 silent years were dark days for Israel as Isaiah said in his prophecy about the time of the coming of the Messiah; that darkness shall cover the earth and thick darkness the peoples. However, in that darkness there was a faithful Jewish remnant who held onto the promise that God would not leave them without hope, but would soon fulfill his promises to them.
It had been over 4,000 years since God had told Adam and Eve that the 'Seed Of The Woman' would deliver mankind. It had been nearly 2,000 years since Abraham had been promised that his 'seed' would bless the nations of the earth. It had been over 1,500 years since Moses promised that God would raise up a prophet like him that the people should listen to. It had been over 1,000 years since king David who united the tribes of Israel had ruled them. The nation looked to a return of a king like David which would rule over the nation of Israel once again. Now before I go on, I want to talk to you about four main schools of thought that had developed during the 400 silent years.
As you read through Matthew, Mark, Luke and John which is what we call the gospel stories you see 3 of these groups mentioned. The first group is the Pharisees. The second group is the Sadducees. The third group is the Essenes. The fourth group is the Zealots. Let me briefly describe each one of these groups.
The first group is the Pharisees who descended from the freedom fighters of the Maccabean era. The vast majority of them were middle class merchants.
The Pharisees believed in the entire Old Covenant law and accepted oral interpretation. Oral interpretation is a belief that humans must use their human logic in interpreting the Torah and applying it to contemporary problems. However, where the problem arose was whose human reasoning? The Pharisees would literally sit around arguing among themselves about who was right.
The oral tradition is where you get all of the little rules that they came up with; written in their rule book which added thousands of sub rules to the Torah law.
It’s why Jesus called them blind guides who strain out a gnat but swallow a camel. The oral tradition became very complicated and legalistic, however the vast majority of the population during the time of Jesus listened to them since they were the religious leaders of the day. The Pharisees did not have governmental authority in Israel like the Sadducees who were the political leaders but because of their popularity among the religious Jews they did have political power through the power of persuasion.
The Pharisees were very active in their faith believing that the study of the Torah was the highest act of worship and established synagogues all over the known world where Jews had been dispersed. They believed in bodily resurrection, life after death and angels. Pharisees accepted Rome’s control as a necessary evil as long as they were allowed to practice their religion.
The second group was the Sadducees who descended from Solomon’s high priest, Zadok and became a faction around 200 BC. The Sadducees were wealthy, aristocratic and often spoke Greek as their main language. They did acknowledge God’s law but only as a vehicle to retain their place of wealth and power within the Jewish nation. They rejected the oral traditions of the Pharisees and despised their strict moral codes along with rejecting the synagogues setup by the Pharisees.
The Sadducees despised the Pharisees and saw them as religious nuts. The Sadducees believed that the temple was the only pathway for the Jewish nation to worship because that’s how they retained their power since they controlled the temple and its ceremonies. The Sadducees dominated the Sanhedrin which was the Jewish ruling council and because of that they received Roman support.
The Sadducees were the high society of the Jewish power structure closely aligned with the Roman authorities.
They did not believe in bodily resurrection so therefore did not believe in an afterlife. The historian Josephus described them as secular and not interested in Judaism as a faith. He described them as not believing in a God who directed the affairs of men, but they believed man was left to his own devices to figure things out. I would call them practical atheists who used the Jewish religion as a means of power.
The third group during that period of time is the Essenes. You don’t really hear much of them in the gospels because they pretty much lived outside of public life. It’s thought that the Essenes came from both the Sadducee and Pharisees faction. The Essenes were isolationist much in the same way you will see Mennonites in Canada or the Amish in parts of the United States who stay strictly within their own communities. The Essenes practiced their faith in the wilderness because they believed it was against God to participate in Temple services led by corrupt priests. They felt the nation of Israel was corrupt politically and spiritually beyond fixing, therefore they withdrew from the corruption to the desert on the eastern shores of the Dead Sea in the towns of Judea.
The Essenes thought of themselves as the true priests descended only from Zadok and followed a rigid adherence to the Torah. They believed that God was soon coming to judge the nation of Israel along with the nations and that they were the chosen ones to prepare for the imminent arrival of the kingdom of God. The Essenes were scribes who copied the Torah, shared property, partook of communal meals and practiced ritual cleansing. It is through their tireless dedication that we have some of our best manuscripts of the Old Covenant documents along with historical documents that were preserved and we referred to these manuscripts as the Dead Sea scrolls.
The fourth group was the Zealots. The Zealots were kind of like the militia movement or sovereign citizen movement here in the United States.
It was a movement formed against Roman rule in 6 A.D. By Judas of Galilee. The Zealots were mainly extreme Pharisees living primarily in Galilee, the same province Jesus was raised in. Their beliefs resembled the Pharisees, but they only believed God could rule the nation of Israel.
To the Zealot, cooperation with Rome constituted idolatry in the form of recognizing Caesar as lord in the place of God. The Zealots despised the Roman Empire and resisted what they considered their illegitimate authority over the nation of Israel, therefore they refused to pay taxes to Rome. The Zealots were considered terrorists by the Romans because they did commit acts of assassination targeting those who cooperated with the Roman authorities.
The context I just painted, which is 400 silent years with no prophet, the nation of Israel divided with these 4 main competing ideas, the Roman Empire extending its rule over Israel which all had come to a climax. The people could feel something was happening because God was stirring the nations and placing history in the right context for the long-awaited Messiah. An anticipation of the kingdom of God coming soon and coming immediately became popular at this time.
Differing views of the coming kingdom of God were being theorized. There were many Jews who were hoping for a political kingdom, a military and geographical realm from which the Jews, under a descendant of David would rule Israel and extend that rule over the nations. They thought a Messiah like David would usher in an eternal kingdom on earth. This was the dream of Jewish nationalism. The Jewish concept of the kingdom of God explains why the Jews tried to make Jesus king by force during the early part of His ministry; they wanted Him to lead them out from Roman oppression and establish a political kingdom greater than David’s.
Another view believed that God had to destroy the evil present in this age before he could establish His kingdom. They envisioned a new world in which all-evil, demons, sickness and death would be defeated and eradicated. By dividing history into two period's-evil and good-they set their hope in the age to come.
I went through all of this to help you better understand the context of the time when Jesus walked the earth. If you don’t understand context, then many times you will misinterpret the Bible.
As Americans we grow up with certain lenses or viewpoints by which we judge and look at the world. Our ideas of government, social context, economic systems and religious views affect how we understand. I’m not saying our views are necessarily wrong, but what can happen is that when you read the Bible then you superimpose your ideas upon the Bible. You can easily begin to interpret the Bible through your own understanding and when you do that, you can make the Bible say some pretty wrong things and totally misunderstand what it is trying to teach.
It was in this context of the 400 silent years that we need to read the gospels and when we do that it can help us to better understand its message. In previous lessons we talked about the Holy Spirit overshadowing Mary, then as a result her being impregnated by the Holy Spirit and giving birth to a son which was a prophecy fulfilling Isaiah 7:14. It says the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name Immanuel which means God with us.
The prophecy was given some 700 years before.
The gospels of Matthew and Luke give the ancestry of Jesus according to Mary and Joseph's family line both fulfilling prophecies. Luke 3:23-38 traces Jesus's ancestry according to Mary back to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and to Adam fulfilling the prophetic promises of Genesis 15 and Genesis 3:15. Matthew opens up his gospel in chapter 1:1-17 taking us through Joseph’s ancestry fulfilling multiple prophecies about the Davidic messianic prophecies. Joseph and Mary were from Nazareth in Galilee and raised Jesus in Nazareth. Matthew 2:23 says Jesus went and lived in a city called Nazareth, so that what was spoken by the prophets might be fulfilled, that he would be called a Nazarene.
At the end of Mary’s pregnancy the Romans called for a census and since Joseph was from the tribe of Judah he had to go to the province of Judea causing Jesus to be born in Bethlehem fulfilling the messianic prophecy in Micah 5:2. In the midst of this great darkness a Star appeared over Jesus's birth which caused the 3 wise men from Persia in the east to travel and to visit the king of the Jews.
Tradition has said they visited 12 days after his birth, but that does not seem to be correct. It is estimated that it could have been from 40 days to 2 years after his birth. The wise men visited king Herod on their way to visit Jesus, but they had a dream and were told not to return or to speak to him. Due to the wise men not returning king Herod grew suspicious and had all the male children in Bethlehem and that region killed because he was an authoritarian tyrant and felt threatened because he knew the king of the Jews had been born.
Herod’s ruthless act fulfilled the prophecy of Jeremiah 31:15. Now the gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh given to the king of Kings brought by the wise men helped to support Joseph and Mary when they escaped Herod’s wrath taking Jesus to Egypt for 3 years. This fulfilled the prophecy from Hosea 11:1, out of Egypt I called my son.
Joseph, Mary and Jesus after Herod’s death returned to Nazareth in the hills of Judaea and Jesus was raised as a normal middle-class Hebrew working with his hands as a carpenter. The Bible doesn’t tell us much about Jesus’ upbringing other than his visit to the Jewish Temple when he was 12 years old where He demonstrated a glimpse of his future ministry. It was some 30 years later when the real action of biblical prophecy began to be fulfilled.
Jesus and John the Baptist grew up knowing each other since they were cousins and only 6 months apart in age. John, like Jesus, had supernatural beginnings. He was just a man, but he was also the last Old Covenant Prophet and was called from his mother’s womb. The book of Malachi ended with a prophecy, Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers. Then we had 400 silent years.
It’s hard for us to imagine 400 silent years in our lifetime. We can’t handle waiting 5 minutes in silence.
The United States is only 400 years old and that’s if you go back to when Europeans first set foot on the North American continent, escaping religious persecution settling Plymouth Rock. 400 years is a long time with no prophetic voice and it was John the Baptist who was the fulfillment of this prophecy in Malachi. We know that John’s father Zechariah was of the lineage of Aaron, so John was by birth part of the priesthood. We know nothing of his upbringing, but normally one of the priestly line would be raised with a deep knowledge of the Torah, its ceremonies and practices of the Temple.
We have 400 silent years then we see this Prophet appear preaching in the wilderness of Judea.
Matthew 3:2 thru 4 "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” For this is he who was spoken of by the prophet Isaiah when he said, “The voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord; make his paths straight.’”
Now John wore a garment of camel's hair and a leather belt around his waist and his food was locusts and wild honey. John didn’t have the high priestly attire like his father; but he was this eccentric man preaching a message of repentance in the wilderness and confronting the religious leaders of his day. The spirit and power of Elijah was upon him.
The people saw in John a true prophet, the religious leaders of the day saw in John a real threat to their power. He didn’t come from their schools, was not invited to their ministry meetings and didn’t agree with the system they had built to basically manipulate and control the children of Israel. He had a simple message unlike the complicated religious rules of the Pharisees: John’s message was repent and be baptized for the remission of sins.
The prophetic ministry of John was a wrecking ball on the religious and political systems the Pharisees and Sadducees had built. It was a system built to serve themselves at the expense of the people.
John did not mince words with the Pharisees and Sadducees, he called them a brood of vipers or snakes fleeing the burning of a field. The Pharisees and Sadducees could see that John’s success in calling people to repentance, baptism and preparing them for a Messiah would be the end of their power. They could feel the ground moving underneath them because John’s message exposed them as being illegitimate leaders. John’s preaching showed the people that they had been living a lie under the bondage of a system built by man and not by God.
It was about to get real interesting because Jesus, John’s cousin, came to him in the wilderness to be baptized. In the fullness of times God sent forth His Son, born of woman, born under the Law, to the nation of Israel, to fulfill His prophetic promise. Jesus Christ, the fulfillment of all that the Old Covenant foretold of the Messiah was now being revealed to Israel. When John looked up as a prophet, he did not see the man he had grown up with coming to him but as recorded John 1:3 he said, Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! John prophesied the true intent of Jesus' mission and that was the fulfillment of John’s prophetic ministry.
John was brought into this earth to be the last Old Covenant prophet and fulfills the prophecy of Isaiah 40 of being the preparer of the way for God himself to step into time and fulfill all that was written in the Law, Psalms and Prophets.
Jesus was the fulfillment of what the Prophet, Priest and King was to be. He was immersed in water and upon his raising was then empowered by the Spirit to fulfill his 3 1/2-year ministry. Jesus fulfilled over 332 distinct prophecies. We started this lesson out explaining the statistical improbability of any one man fulfilling just 8 of these prophecies.
Now the prophecy of the Suffering Servant in Isaiah 53 was one of the most misunderstood prophecies, yet it is the one that most graphically displays the purpose of why the Messiah came. The people of Israel had been under the heel of the Roman’s power and the Zealots fought them, the Essences just hid, the Pharisees tolerated them and the Sadducees embraced Rome’s rule.
The vast majority of the people were anticipating a coming kingdom of God where they would be free from Rome’s authority and be ruled by God. It’s the message that John was sent to preach. Jesus like John taught the message of the kingdom of God and it was a message that leveled the playing field.
His message destroyed the power structure. He was a man of the people who walked among the common man. Religion, politics, along with those who trusted in their wealth and power were challenged through the message of the kingdom. Jesus taught in most of his parables about the kingdom of God. But the one thing that the teachers of Israel failed to understand was that the Messiah first had to suffer as the 'Lamb of God' before He could deliver them from their enemies.
The Pharisees knew the scriptures but could not see the truth. The Pharisees didn’t have the spiritual insight to understand their times. Prophecy can be complex. As I said at the start of this lesson, prophecy is like an onion that you peel off in layers. Interpreting prophecy is not easy just go read the book of Revelation. Tread lightly because when you think you have it figured out; you might find yourself on the wrong side like the Pharisees did.
Prophecy is many times an enigma and it’s meant to be. It is mysterious, puzzling and many times difficult to understand so you have to walk by faith. You have to be careful with prophecy because it’s in God's hand and he brings it to pass. His ways are not our ways therefore humility of heart is a necessity to truly understand. The main thing that blinded the Pharisees was their spiritual pride. They were the expert interpreters of the law and as far as they were concerned their views were God’s view. God as usually had other plans. Walk lightly with prophecy and be flexible because you are moving with the winds of the Spirit. I say this because I know people who think they have our present times all figured out and can give you charts on everything that is going to happen in regard to Jesus' second coming. All I will say to you is the Pharisees probably had their own charts and they completely missed the Messiah.
What the Pharisees could not understand was that Jesus as the final fulfillment of the seed of the woman did deliver Israel and the world, but not the way that they thought he was supposed to. The Sadducees and the Pharisees were mortal enemies, but they came into an agreement around the death of Jesus. The Sadducees embodied pure lawlessness and the Pharisees embodied pure legalism and the god of this age, the serpent of old used them and their lust for power to kill the king of the Jews. What the serpent failed to understand was that it was through the death of the Lamb of God that his power was actually destroyed. It destroyed his power over not just the children of Abraham, but all humanity through the blood that poured out on the cross.
Jesus coming was not to destroy the Roman government, but the government or power of sin.
The beating of Christ by the soldiers and his silent reply in Matthew 27:30-31 was a fulfillment of Isaiah 53:7 Jesus dying on the cross with other criminals in Matthew 27:38 was a fulfillment of Isaiah 53:12. Jesus Christ who 'existed in the form of God...emptied Himself, taking the form of man. He humbled Himself to the place of death on a cross so that through His death, He might render powerless Him who had the power of death, that is, the devil.'
Jesus being buried in the rich man Joseph's grave in Matthew 27:57-60 was a fulfillment of Isaiah 53:9. Jesus being raised from the dead in Matthew 28:10 was a fulfillment of Psalms 16:1-8. In Luke 24:26-27 we see that after Jesus rose from the dead, He met two of His disciples on the road to Emmaus. I hope one day I get to hear that sermon. While walking down the road with them He explained to them that it was 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 of the Bible.
Through the resurrection, Jesus was raised up and seated at the right hand of the Father. Hebrews 5:6, 10 says that Jesus is now the High Priest of the New Blood Covenant which is a fulfillment of Psalms 110:4. A priest is someone designated by God to stand between Himself, a Holy God and a sinful people offering up sacrifices for the sins of the people. Jesus was the sacrifice and now He is the High Priest who presents His cleansing blood on our behalf.
Jesus was born and died as the king of the Jews. However, the prophecies concerning the Messiah ruling the earth won’t be fulfilled until Christ's Second Coming as foretold in Revelations 19:11-16, which will fulfill the prophecies of Isaiah 11:4 and Daniel 7:13-14, when Christ will rule as King of the earth.
Understanding Jesus is the most important thing in this life, because it is in understanding Him on which eternal life is based.
In Matthew 16:15 Jesus asks His disciples, "Who do you say that I am?" Peter answered, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." In this life we must be able to answer for ourselves, "Who is Jesus?" Jesus was more than a prophet; he was more than a good man or even a martyr; He was 'God manifested in the flesh' to take mankind's sin once and for all. As the 'seed of the woman' He came to redeem man by crushing the serpent's head with His bruised body. Jesus Christ fulfilled all that the prophets predicted concerning the Messiah and now by the grace He has given, we can enter into His finished work on the cross. As we partake of the grace shown to us through Christ's first coming', we need to expectantly look for the 'second coming' of Christ. This will be the final fulfillment of all the prophets spoke when Christ will return to the earth and rule the nations as the 'King of kings'.
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Next Lesson: Lesson 7 - The Cycle of Dead Works
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