Lessons on the Walk to Emmaus

Individual Topics — Steve Gregg

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Lessons on the Walk to Emmaus

Individual TopicsSteve Gregg

In "Lessons on the Walk to Emmaus", Steve Gregg discusses the Old Testament prophecies related to Jesus Christ. Using the story of the two men on the road to Emmaus from Luke 24, Gregg explores how different parts of the Old Testament refer to Jesus, including as a type, prophecy, or theophany. By studying these references, Gregg argues that Christians can better understand the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus and continue his mission of bringing justice and righteousness to the world.

Transcript

Who asked me a couple months ago if I would try to approximate a talk that would cover the information that Jesus probably covered when he was talking to the men on the road to Emmaus. You know, this story is in Luke 24. These two men, this was after the resurrection of Christ, but they did not know that Jesus had risen from the dead.

It was Sunday afternoon, and he'd risen that morning. They'd heard a report of an empty tomb and of angels at the tomb, but they were not necessarily willing to believe that Jesus had risen. And this stranger approached them on the road as they were on their way home from Jerusalem to Emmaus, a distance, I think, about seven miles.

So it'd be about a two and a half hour walk. And this stranger came up to them and began inquiring what they were so sad about. And they told him that they had hoped that he would be the one, but now they were disappointed that he apparently was not because he had died.

On the other hand, they had heard some reports of him being risen, but they didn't quite buy in to those reports. And Jesus kind of rebukes them in Luke 24, verses 25 through 27. It says, then he said to them, O foolish ones and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken.

Ought not the Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into his glory? Then it says, and beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded to them in all the scriptures, the things concerning himself. Now, this sounds like a pretty extensive presentation in all the scriptures, starting with Moses and the prophets. Now, I have to say that it's hard to know exactly how many of the things in the prophets and in Moses he would have brought up, how many he would have felt were necessary to bring up.

They're probably, if he had wished, could have spent much more time than they actually had if he wanted to take everything. You know, there are some evangelical scholars have said that Jesus in his lifetime fulfilled upwards of 300 Old Testament prophecies. Now, if Jesus was to talk about all of those, he wouldn't be able to give as much as two minutes to each one, probably, or four minutes to each one if he was going to try to cover everything, in fact, much less.

So, you know, what did he include? Well, it doesn't say that he exhausted the entire field of Old Testament predictions about himself. It says, beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded to them in all the scriptures. Now, in all the scriptures probably means in every part of the scripture, the law, the prophets, and what they called the writings, which were the Psalms.

That is, he may well have selected things, leaving many things out for them to later understand. We do know from what the later apostles said in their preaching in the book of Acts and from the epistles where they quote Old Testament passages, that there were a very large number of Old Testament passages that they applied to Christ, which quite possibly the Jews would not have recognized as being Messianic. Whether Jesus brought all these up or whether this was a result of him, as it says in another passage, opening their understanding that they might understand the scriptures later in the same chapter, not speaking about the men on the road to Emmaus, but to the apostles in the upper room in Luke 24 verses 44 through 45, it says, then he said to the disciples, these are the words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the law of Moses and the prophets and the Psalms concerning me.

And he opened their understanding that they might comprehend the scriptures. Now, I'm curious, and I don't know if we'll ever know, what is meant by he opened their understanding. This could mean that he kind of gave them sort of a capacity to understand the Old Testament scriptures through new eyes, simply sort of an indwelling state of revelation that whenever they read or thought about the Old Testament scriptures after that, suddenly the true meaning of those scriptures dawned on them.

They recognized it. Or it could mean that he went through the scriptures with them, opening their minds in the sense that he explained them to them. And he explained the scriptures to them.

In any case, Luke 24 indicates that there was much in the Old Testament that was about Jesus in the law and the prophets and the Psalms and all the scriptures. How much we really cannot say. I've often thought that those who say there are 300 prophecies that Jesus fulfilled, they may be stretching a little bit.

I mean, there are certain ways in which Jesus may be depicted that are not strictly speaking prophecies, but there certainly is an abundance of prophetic information about Jesus. So what I thought I would do as requested would be to go through all the scriptures, that is all the parts of the New Testament that are not as much as I see. And of course, Jesus could have seen far more than I did, but he might not have even brought up as much as we'll bring up, because he could have done this with a handful of examples from the law, a handful from the prophets, a handful from the Psalms.

And after all, the book of Psalms has more in it about Jesus than apparently the law or the prophets, because in the New Testament, the disciples quoted the book of Psalms more than they quoted any other book when indicating things about Jesus. Certainly Psalm 22, Psalm 110, Psalm 2 are cited frequently. There's quite a few others.

A lot of Psalms are quoted, and some of them are quoted multiple times. So we're going to have to include the Psalms. According to Acts 2, 29 through 31, Peter said that David, the writer of the Psalms, was a prophet.

So if Jesus was giving them everything that was in the prophets, that would include the Psalms. And of course, it does say in Luke 24 that he said that all must be fulfilled which were written in the law of Moses and the prophets and the Psalms concerning me. But in Acts chapter 2, and I'm turning there, so that's why I'll take a second here to turn there.

This is what Peter said about David. Psalm 2, 29 through 31 says, Men and brethren, let me speak freely to you of the patriarch David, that he is both dead and buried and his tomb is with us to this day. Therefore being a prophet and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that of the fruit of his body, according to the flesh, he would raise up the Messiah to sit on his throne.

He foreseeing this spoke concerning the resurrection of Christ that his soul was not left in Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption. He's referring to Psalm 16, which actually Paul cited also in Acts 13. They both quoted that same Psalm, that his soul was not allowed to see corruption in the grave, which they saw as a reference to his resurrection.

So we have the books of Moses, which of course would be what we call the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible. The Jews called that the Torah or the law. The rest, or much of the rest, most of the rest of the Old Testament, they called the prophets.

Now when we use the prophets, we're thinking of beginning at Isaiah. There's five major prophets and there's 12 minor prophets. We have 17 prophets from Isaiah to the end of the Old Testament.

But the Jews didn't speak of the prophets that way. What we just, what we refer to as the prophets, Isaiah through Malachi, they refer to as the latter prophets. The former prophets to them included the books of Joshua, Judges, first and second Samuel, first and second Kings.

They called those the earlier prophets and they called the books that we call prophetic books, they called them the latter prophets. So the law and the prophets pretty much takes up almost the entirety of the Old Testament, except there's that other group of which Psalms is the most prominent book. The Tehillim, the writings, these are a third category in the Old Testament.

So when it says he showed them in all the scriptures, it probably means in the law and the prophets and the writings. Now there are three different ways in which Jesus is revealed in the Old Testament. Perhaps I'm going to start with the most familiar and work maybe toward maybe the less familiar.

The most familiar way in which Messiah is presented in the Old Testament is in prophecies. And I've already made reference to the fact there's lots of prophecies, maybe or maybe not as many as some people think, but certainly a lot of them. And rather than count up the prophecies, I'd like to suggest the kinds of things that the prophets predicted and examples of them doing so.

There's quite a lot that they said about the Messiah. Now the prophets weren't always speaking about the Messiah. They spoke about other things.

They spoke about judgment of God coming on Israel, upon Judah. They spoke about judgment of God coming on the nations around them. Lots of long chapters devoted to that kind of thing.

But periodically, the prophets would speak of the Messiah. They didn't use the word Messiah. Actually, the only one of the prophets that actually used that term for this subject was Daniel in Daniel chapter 9. He spoke of Messiah, the prince.

But the word Messiah came to be associated with this person that the prophets said would come. There was a developing line of narrative from early books of the Bible through the last book of the Bible that were said to be about this coming one. He'd be a king.

He'd be descended from David. He would be the Savior. Of his people, he'd be many features of him are described by the prophets.

Notably, Jesus fulfilled them all. And so I'm going to just talk about from the earliest of these prophecies and move on through and try to give an idea of what Jesus might have pointed out to the disciples from the prophets. Then there's two other ways that Jesus is seen in the Old Testament.

One of them would be in types. I assume many of you know what I mean by types. If you don't, I'll explain that when we get there.

And then a third way is in theophanies. Once again, I expect many of you know what a theophany is, and some of you probably don't. We'll talk about those.

So there's prophecies, there's types, and there's theophanies, all of which are means by which we see Jesus when we read the Old Testament. In Psalm 40, it is the Messiah speaking who says, Lo, I come in the volume of the book it is written of me. That is Messiah.

And by the way, this is quoted in Hebrews chapter 10 as if Jesus is the speaker saying in the volume of the book it is written of me. Meaning, I believe, the Old Testament. And so from the very earliest chapters of the Old Testament, Genesis, on through the law and the prophets and the writings, especially the Psalms, down to the end through Malachi, we have a developing narrative about this one who would come whom the Jews called the Messiah.

Now the word Messiah, of course, means the anointed one. The anointing refers to the ritual of installing a king. When Saul was installed as king, the prophet Samuel poured oil over his head, which was anointing him to be king.

When David became king, Samuel did the same thing over his head. The anointing of the king was the installation to office. The Messiah would be the anointed one, the king, the ultimate king, the king par excellence, the one that would be the king to beat all kings, the king of kings, and the Lord of Lords.

This is the one that they called the Messiah. Now the first hints about this Messiah were found in Genesis chapter 3, and this is right after Adam and Eve sinned. We don't have any prophecies before this in the Bible, but this one's probably the first prophecy of the Bible and almost certainly a reference to Christ.

At least Christians have always understood it to be so. In Genesis chapter 3, in verse 15, after Adam and Eve sinned, God actually spoke to the serpent and said in verse 14, because you have done this, you were cursed above all cattle and more than every beast of the field. On your belly you shall go and you shall eat dust all the days of your life.

Then verse 15 says, and I will put enmity, which means hostility, between you and the woman and between your seed and her seed. He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel. Now the word seed can be used as a plural or a singular.

We find this to be true in other cases where it refers to the Messiah. The singular seed is the Messiah. The plural seed would simply be the multiple offspring.

He talks about the woman and the serpent. First of all, God says he put enmity between the woman and the serpent, which probably just speaks about the natural hostility that exists between humans, perhaps women more than men even, and snakes. But then he said, and between your seed and her seed.

Now, once again, this could simply mean the race of humans and the race of serpents. There will be some bad blood between them. They won't like each other.

The serpents will try to avoid or hurt humans and humans will, generally speaking, hurt snakes. Now, it might seem strange to those of us who live in America where we don't really have very many deadly snakes and most snakes are helpful and harmless, but we do have some deadly snakes. But in most parts of the world, Africa, Australia, South America, Asia, and I guess the Middle East too, the majority of serpents, almost all the species, are venomous and some are very deadly.

So, although not all serpents are deadly, a great number of them are and they have been historically hated by men and killed when possible. But then, after saying her seed and your seed, that is the offspring of the woman and the offspring of the snake, he says, and he shall bruise your head. Now, this is talking about he, an individual seed of the woman, will bruise your, not the offspring of the snake, but the snake himself.

He will bruise your head. Now, this has been understood as a prophecy that the Messiah, the seed of the woman, the ultimate seed of the woman, par excellence, will crush not simply the head of snakes in general, of the snake, the serpent. Now, interestingly, Genesis does not identify the snake as Satan.

In fact, no place in the Bible identifies the snake as Satan until you get to Revelation. In Revelation chapter 12 and verse 9 and then again in Revelation chapter 20, we find that the dragon and the serpent are called Satan and the devil. In particular, in Revelation 12 and 9, it says that old serpent, that ancient serpent, which is called the devil and Satan.

So, we know that although it's not really spelled out for us in the Bible until Revelation, the serpent really is a manifestation of Satan in the garden and God has put enmity between Christ and Satan and has predicted that Christ, the seed of the woman, would crush Satan's head and that Satan would bruise his heels. Certainly, the death of Jesus is almost certainly the reference, what is referred to as the bruising of his heel and the crushing of Satan. We might say that that happened at the cross and it certainly did in a certain sense because it says in Hebrews chapter 2 and verse 14 that through death, Jesus destroyed him that had the power of death, that is the devil.

And in Colossians 2 15, it says that through the cross, Jesus disarmed the principalities and powers and triumphed over them, making a show of them openly. So, Satan and his minions were truly crushed in a very real sense at the cross. But the ongoing campaign of spiritual warfare indicates and Paul even predicts that Satan's head will be crushed or continually crushed or the results of that crushing will be manifest through the church itself.

This reference in Genesis 3 verse 15 that we just read informs a prediction that Paul made in Romans chapter 16 and verse 20. Speaking to the church in Rome, he says, and the God of peace will crush Satan under your feet shortly. So, Christ crushed his head, but we are the body of Christ.

We are his feet and his hands, his body. And we also are, you know, fulfilling the work of Christ. We're not doing what he did to redeem, but we are carrying on the conquest of the serpent's kingdom by spreading his kingdom.

And so, this first reference to the seed of the woman is almost always by Christians seen to be a reference to the Messiah. Now, I don't know if Jews understood that way, and I don't know if that's one of the things that Jesus brought up to the road, on the road to Emmaus. But if he was an evangelical preacher, he would.

That is, if he was a modern evangelical preacher. But it's not just modern preachers. It's a long-standing belief of the Christian church that this Genesis 3 verse 15 is the very first prediction about the Messiah in the And I believe it's correct.

Then we have, of course, as we move through Genesis a little more, we have this man Abraham. And beginning at Abraham in Genesis 12, and repeated in several other places in Genesis, God promises to Abraham that he would bear a seed. And through his seed, all the families of the earth will be blessed.

Or later, he says, all the nations of the earth will be blessed. Now, Paul tells us that this seed is Christ. Again, the word seed can be plural or singular.

And I think that the Jews mainly thought of themselves, the whole nation of Israel, as the seed of Abraham. And in a sense, they were. But it's not through the Jewish nation, but through the singular seed of Abraham, Christ, that this blessing comes to the whole world.

And the references to the seed of Abraham, frequently made to Abraham and to Isaac and to Jacob, they're repeated in the book of Genesis, are references ultimately to Christ. Paul said in Galatians 3 verse 16, Now unto Abraham and his seed the promises were made. Then Paul says, He does not say to seeds as of many, but to your seed, which is Christ.

So Paul makes it very clear by revelation of the Holy Spirit that the seed of Abraham is also a prediction about Christ. And the prediction there is that he will bless all the nations of the earth. In Genesis 3, it was predicted that he would crush the head of Satan.

We know that this primarily probably looks at the cross, but also the ongoing ministry of Christ through the church. But now we have him, as well as crushing Satan, blessing the nations. Now, as you read Galatians 3, and the verses that follow verse 16, Paul makes it very clear that the blessing of Abraham, which the Messiah brings to the nations, is justification by faith and the gift of the Holy Spirit.

In other words, salvation. Salvation is the blessing to all the nations of the earth, that the Messiah, the seed of Abraham. So we first find that prediction in Genesis 12, one through three.

Although there's not really reference to his seed per se, there's reference to Abraham being a blessing, but it's later made clear it's not going to be Abraham himself, but his offspring, his seed. So we see, for example, in Genesis 21, 12, Genesis 22, 18, references to the seed of Abraham that will bless the nations. Now, as we go further through Genesis, there's yet another prophecy about the Messiah.

This comes up when Jacob is on his deathbed, and he is prophesying about the fate of each of his 12 sons. Now, when it came to prophesying over his son Judah, his fourth son, there's a Messianic prophecy. And interestingly enough, the Messiah came through the tribe of Judah.

And that is what is, of course, implied in the prophecy itself. If you look at Genesis chapter 49, 10, Jacob says, the scepter, and of course, the scepter is an emblem of rulership, just like a crown, only it's a rod held in the hand of a king, an ornamented rod, which is the emblem of his reign. So the rulership, the scepter, shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet until Shiloh comes.

Now, the word Shiloh here, they say, means him to whom it belongs. That's what the word Shiloh means, the one owning it, the one to whom it belongs. What belongs? The scepter.

The scepter will be held by the tribe of Judah, and it will not depart, it will be kept safe, in the hands of the Judean tribe, until Shiloh, the one who it belongs to, comes. And then it says, and to him shall the obedience of the people be. So the people will obey him, he'll be the ruler, he'll have the scepter.

And that is, of course, a reference to Christ. It's interesting that after Saul, the first king, all the kings in Judah were David and his descendants, and David was of the tribe of Judah. So the scepter remained in the hand of Judah, even after the kingship ended there, because when they went into Babylon, that ended the Judean kingship until Jesus came.

And when Jesus came, he descended from the kings of Judah, and he was the one who was, as the wise men said, born king of the Jews. When the wise men came in Matthew chapter 2, it says, they said, where is he who is born king of the Jews? He was born king of the Jews because he was from the kingly line. He was the hereditary king from the line of Judah.

And the scepter came and was given to him. Not a literal scepter, he doesn't hold, he never held a scepter in his hand or sat on a literal throne. This is imagery for him being the king.

The rulership was transferred to him, and he came through the tribe of Judah. And therefore, Genesis 49.10 is seen as a significant messianic prophecy. Now when we come to Exodus, and the next, that is the four books after Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, these are books that cover the lifetime of Moses.

And Moses himself is a type of Christ. Because Moses predicted in Deuteronomy 18, that there would be a king, or not a king, but a prophet that God would send who was like Moses, that is a replacement for Moses. Moses was the deliverer of his people, the savior of his people.

Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 10, the people who escaped from Egypt, that was a type and a shadow of us being saved from sin. And they were baptized into Moses. We, in contrast, are baptized into Christ.

And Moses was there authority, and leader, and lawgiver, just as Christ is for us. And Christ, therefore, is said to be a prophet like Moses. Thus, Moses is like Christ.

And it says, here's a prophecy that Moses gave with reference to the Messiah in Deuteronomy 18.15 through 19. Moses said, the Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your midst, from your brethren, him you shall hear, according to all that you desired of the Lord your God, in Horeb, in the day of the assembly, saying, let me not hear again the voice of the Lord my God, nor let me see this great fire anymore, lest I die. And the Lord said to me, what they have spoken is good, etc., etc.

Then going down to verse 18, he says, I will raise up for them a prophet like you, God says to Moses, from among their brethren, and will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him, and it shall be that whoever will not hear my words, which he speaks in my name, I will require it of him. Now, this passage is quoted twice in the New Testament as being about Jesus. The first person quoted was Peter in his second recorded sermon.

He quotes it in Acts 3, verses 22 through 23. And the next time it's quoted is by Stephen in his final sermon in Acts 7, and verse 37. So, twice this prophecy about the prophet like Moses to come is applied to Jesus, which means that Jesus probably, on the road to Emmaus, brought this up.

Good chance. It certainly is a prophecy about Jesus. Now, what's interesting is the way it's quoted by Peter.

Instead of saying, whoever does not hear this prophet, I will require it of him. The way it's worded in Acts is whoever does not hear him will be cut off from the people, an expression that the Old Testament uses for someone being cut out of Israel. So, the Jews, God would send them the Messiah, and those who would receive him would remain as part of Israel, and those that would not hear him would be cut off from his people.

That's in Acts chapter 3, in verse 22 and 23. So, in other words, when Jesus came, that was the pivot of who would be considered Israel forever after. Anyone who did not hear that prophet would be cut off from Israel.

They wouldn't be part of it anymore. And only those who received him would be considered Israel according to the prophecy. So, Moses then gave that prophecy of a prophet like himself.

Now, we already said that David was a prophet, and many of the Psalms of David speak of the Messiah. I'll bring up some of those in a moment. But the first thing related to David of importance to us would be a prophecy made in 2 Samuel chapter 7. And I'm sure, David, I'm sure that when Jesus spoke to them in the rodeo ministry, he would not have left this out.

This is a key, pivotal prophecy about the Messiah. It became defining of what the Jews understood about the Messiah forever afterward. In chapter 7 of 2 Samuel, verse 12, the prophet Nathan came to David and speaking the words of the Lord, he said, when your days are fulfilled and you rest with your fathers, I will set up your seed, after you, there's a seed again, who will come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom.

He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the house of his kingdom forever. I will be his father, and he shall be my son. This last line, I shall be his father, he shall be my son, is quoted in Hebrews chapter 1, verse 5, as being about Christ.

So there's no question that this is a messianic prophecy. Now, it's another one of those prophecies where the seed can be singular or plural, and it kind of functions both ways, in one aspect of applying to David's offspring in general, and in another way to the specific offspring, the Messiah. The reason I say that is because, speaking of David's offspring, when David died and was buried, which is when God said he'd fulfill this, his son Solomon sat on his throne and built a house to the name of the Lord, the very thing that was predicted here.

And then Solomon's son, Rehoboam, and then the whole line of kings of Judah were descended from David. They were the seed of David, or the sons of David. And therefore, in a sense, this prophecy can simply be saying that God's going to establish a durable line of kings from David's seed, David's offspring.

However, some of the wording makes that impossible, because it says, I will establish his kingdom forever. Now, there were 20 kings after David who ruled in Jerusalem, but after Jeconiah, there were none. That kingdom came to an end when they went into Babylon.

Even though they came back from Babylon, they never had a king again, a Jewish king. They were under the Persians, and then under the Greeks, and under the Romans, and then they were destroyed in 70 AD, and that was the end of them. So, the only king of the line of David, whose kingdom would be established forever, would be the Messiah.

And that is exactly how the Jews understood this, and that's exactly how the New Testament understands it. It's based on this prophecy, that the Jews considered the Messiah to be the son of David. Now, notice that the lineage of the Messiah is narrowed down again and again.

First, he's the seed of the woman. Well, that's not very narrow. All of us are offspring of Adam and Eve.

Then, he's the seed of Abraham. Well, that narrows it down, because there are a lot of people descended from Noah who were not Abraham. So, the family line through which the Messiah comes is narrowed down from all the nations of the world down to one nation that would come through Abraham.

And then, a couple generations later, we're told that it would be through Judah, which was, of course, a great-grandson of Abraham, but only one of twelve. But it's narrowed down. One out of twelve of the tribes of Israel, the Messiah would come through.

Shiloh would come through the tribe of Judah. And then, David, who was of Judah, becomes the focal point of that entire tribe, and it's going to be his offspring, not just any other people from Judah, him. So, there are these various prophecies that are mainly related to the ancestry of the Messiah.

He'd be, of course, from Adam and Eve, but he'd also be from Abraham. He would also be from Judah, and he would also be from David. These things are underscored in the very opening verse of Matthew, which, of course, commences to tell the story of Jesus.

In Matthew 1.1, it says, the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. So, pointing out right away that these predictions, he'd be a seed of Abraham, he'd be a seed of David. He says that's what he was.

He fulfilled that part of the prophecies by coming through that line. You know, when Jesus cast the demon out of a man, and some of the people were saying, you know, could this be the son of David? They meant, could this be the Messiah? The son of David was actually a term for the Messiah in their days. And that's what made the Pharisees so frightened, because they thought that people would recognize Jesus as the Messiah, which was not what the Pharisees wished.

But he was, and he was the seed of David. Now, when Jesus said to the Pharisees, very late in his ministry, in the final week, he said, what do you think about the Messiah? Whose son is he? They said, David's son. And, of course, they were basing that entirely on this.

Second Samuel, chapter 7, verses 12 and following, they, based on that prophecy, they didn't have to think for a second. They knew who the Messiah, he's going to be David's son. Now, Jesus called him up, sure, so then why did David call the Messiah his Lord? A man doesn't refer to his own son as his Lord.

And, of course, what Jesus is implying is, while, in fact, the Messiah is the seed of David, he's much more than that. He's also the son of God. In fact, in Romans, Paul begins by making that very point, that Jesus is the seed of David and the son of God.

The very thing that Jesus was implying with that challenge he gave to the Pharisees. You know, if he's David's son, how come David called him Lord? Well, Paul said in Romans, chapter 1, about Jesus, in verse 3, that the gospel is concerning his son, God's son, Jesus Christ our Lord, who was born of the seed of David, according to the flesh, but declared to be the son of God, with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection of the dead. So, Paul points out, yeah, he was the seed of David, according to the flesh, but additional to that, he also had a status which David did not have, and he was the son of God.

So, this prophecy, 2 Samuel 7, 12 through 14, there's no way Jesus could have left this out in sharing what the Old Testament said about himself. Now, as we go through the prophets, then, we will find prophecies that have to do with almost every aspect of Jesus' life. I should say of the Messiah's life, but since Jesus came and fulfilled them, and showed himself to the Messiah, we can say Jesus' life.

But in the Old Testament, they didn't know the name Jesus. They didn't know who the Messiah would be, but they certainly knew a lot about him. First of all, the Messiah would be born at a certain predicted time.

We saw already, in Genesis 49, 10, the scepter will not depart from Judah until Shiloh comes. Now, it's interesting that at a certain point in time, it was either 4 BC or else about 16 AD. Scholars not sure which it is.

The rabbis say that when the Romans took away from the Jews the right to execute capital punishment in obedience to the Torah, they felt that that was the taking away of their sovereignty. And it either happened in 4 BC, which is approximately the year Jesus was born, or around 16 AD. They're not sure.

16 AD is probably when Jesus is 12 years old, discussing scriptures with the wise men in the temple. But in one of those two years, Rome took away from Israel the sovereignty, which would have allowed them to follow the Torah, including executing criminals. From that point on, they had to get Rome's permission, for example, to kill Jesus.

They couldn't kill Jesus. They had to get Pilate's permission, because Rome had taken that away from them. But when that happened, it is said in one of the rabbis in the Talmud that one of the rabbis said, Woe unto us, for the scepter has departed from Judah, and Shiloh has not yet come.

Or actually, they said Messiah has not yet come, identifying him with Shiloh. They said, Woe unto us, the scepter has departed from Judah, and Messiah has not yet come. Interestingly enough, that statement was made either the year Jesus was born, or possibly the year he first, as a young adult, one who reached bar mitzvah age, made his first visit to the temple.

But the Messiah, in fact, did come at approximately the same time when the Jews recognized the scepter being taken from them. So in a sense, the prophecy, the scepter will not depart from Judah until Shiloh comes, is a time prediction. And the truth is, Jesus came at the very time that the Jews understood the scepter to be departing from them.

And so that, you know, any Messiah in the future would not be able to fulfill that time frame. That's an exact prediction of timing. And there's another fairly exact prediction of timing in Daniel, which most people know about, in Daniel chapter 9, which is the only Old Testament book that refers to the Messiah as the Messiah.

You know, he is referred to as the son of David, and things like that, a king. But the word Messiah is used only in Daniel 9, and it's the prophecy of the 70 weeks. And I don't know whether Jesus would have gone over this with them or not.

It's a little detail, but he might have. But it says in verse 25, know therefore and understand that from the going forth of the command to restore and build Jerusalem until Messiah, the prince, there should be seven weeks and 62 weeks. Now, seven and 62 is 69.

So there'd be 69 weeks. Scholars are pretty much agreed that the weeks here refer to a period of seven years, not seven days, but seven years, weeks of years. So 69 weeks from the going forth of the command to restore and build Jerusalem to the Messiah would be 483 years.

Now, there's a bit of a difficulty deciding which decree this begins with. There were three candidates for it. One was the decree of Cyrus, which was made in 536 BC.

However, if you measure the 483 years forward from that, you end up still in pre-Christian times before Jesus was born. But there are two other decrees of the same type, and different scholars have argued for each of them being the one intended. They were both by Artaxerxes, king of Persia.

The first of them was in 457 BC. And if you go forward 483 years from there, you come to the year 26 AD, which is the year Jesus began his public ministry, the 15th year of Tiberius Caesar, Luke refers to it as, and that's 26 or 27 AD. That would be 483 years after the first decree of Artaxerxes to restore and build Jerusalem, which was made in 457 BC.

Now, there's another one. Artaxerxes' second decree was in 445 BC. Some people think that we should make it that one.

And they argue that it would come to 30 AD, which is the year that Jesus probably died. Now, in other words, there's some dispute as to which of these decrees begins the 69 weeks or the 483 years. And I'm not sure we could prove one or the other to be the intended one, but one thing we can certainly say, take either one of them, and as you go forward 483 years, you're going to land in the time frame of Jesus' earthly life and ministry.

And so, in other words, the time of the Messiah coming from the issuing of one of these decrees, it lands in the lifetime of Jesus. So, certainly, the Bible predicted when the Messiah would come, and that's when Jesus came. And yet, these predictions were made hundreds of years.

In the case of Jacob's prophecy, that would have been like, you know, over 2,000 years before Christ, or roughly almost 2,000 years before Christ, I probably should say. And then, you know, Daniel's prophecy was made like 600 years before Christ, and yet they predicted the time of the Messiah. Lo and behold, that's when Jesus shows up.

Which, by the way, is something that a man has no power over. A man can't decide when he's going to be born, so one can't argue that, well, Jesus was a fake Messiah, and he just, you know, worked it out to fulfill the prophecy. How does somebody work it out for them to be born at a certain time? And not only that, the prophets predicted the birth itself and the place of the birth.

In Isaiah 9, 6 and 7, famously, it says, unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and that's, he'll rule, the responsibility of ruling will be upon him, which is what the Messiah is to do, is to rule. And it says, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. Pretty much everyone recognizes that as a prophecy about Jesus, and rightly so.

He has all those things, and therefore, as a reference to his birth, but the place of his birth is mentioned specifically in Micah 5, 2, which says, but you, Bethlehem, Ephrata, though you are little among the tribes of Judah, from you shall he come forth who is to be the ruler of Israel, meaning the Messiah. Goes on to talk about him shepherding Israel, which is what the Messiah also is often predicted to do, be the shepherd of Israel. So, the time and place of Jesus' birth are predicted in the Old Testament.

The fact that he would have a forerunner, that is, John the Baptist would come before Jesus had any public visibility. Before Jesus began to preach, John the Baptist came preaching, and he said, there's one coming after me who's greater than I am, and he pointed him out and said, that's the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Now, how many people have had that happen? That is, before they started their public career, someone else started announcing that they're about to arrive, and this is, you know, coming.

I mean, I'm sure there may be persons in history who've had some form of forerunner before, but it's pretty rare. And yet, it is predicted, Isaiah 40, verse 3, a voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths, every mountain shall be brought low, every valley shall be built up, make the crooked places straight, and the rough places plain, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed. And this is a prophecy that John the Baptist quoted about himself as the forerunner for Christ.

And then Malachi also predicts John the Baptist in Malachi chapter 3 and verse 1. Now, we're at the last book of the Old Testament, so that, you know, the first prophecy is in Genesis. The last one, we find, is in Malachi. You can't get any further than that in the Old Testament.

In Malachi 3, 1, behold, I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before you, or before me, he says, and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple. Now, the Lord is the Messiah whom you seek, and the messenger that's sent before him is John the Baptist. So, it is predicted that a messenger would come before the Messiah to prepare the way for him.

By the way, John the Baptist, or I should say Mark in Mark chapter 1, quotes this passage in Malachi as fulfilled in John the Baptist. So, the Messiah's birth, the time of his birth, the place of his birth, the coming of a forerunner beforehand, to announce him, these are all predicted. His mission is described in various places in the Old Testament.

Perhaps two significant ones worth mentioning would be Isaiah 42, verses 1 through 4, which we know is about Jesus, because Matthew quotes it in Matthew chapter 12, applying to the ministry of Jesus. It says, behold, my servant, Yahweh says, whom I uphold, my elect one in whom my soul delights. I've put my spirit upon him.

That happened at Jesus' baptism. The spirit came upon him in the form of the dove. I will bring forth justice, he will bring forth justice to the Gentiles.

He will not cry out, nor raise his voice, nor cause his voice to be heard in the street. A bruised reed, he shall not break. A smoking flax, he will not quench.

He will bring forth justice for truth. He will not fail, nor be discouraged, till he has established justice in the earth, and the coastlands shall wait for his law. Now, it's interesting, this passage is quoted as being in the process of fulfillment in Matthew 12, during Jesus' earthly ministry in Galilee.

But of course, he did not, in his lifetime, establish justice in the earth, or justice among the Gentiles. But it said he would, and it said he won't fail or be discouraged until he's done that. Of course, Jesus' death and resurrection were not a failure, that was simply a springboard into more broad ministry of the body of Christ into the Gentile world, and he has been for the past 2,000 years, in fact, bringing forth justice in the Gentile world.

Certainly the world that has received the gospel, a portion of it, has a much higher elevated standard of justice and knowledge of what's right and wrong. Oppressive societies, even slavery, you know, leaving children out to be exposed to die, and things like that, those are injustices that simply went away because of Christianity's influence. Wherever Christ's body goes in the world, there's an increase in justice in the order of things.

The Indians used to burn the widows of men who died on their pyres. Christian missionaries pretty much did away with that. That is their influence, and India did that.

The Chinese used to bind the feet of little girls so that they wouldn't grow, and as adults they'd be fairly crippled. Christian missionaries, again, had a lot to do with the ending of that system. Pagans, where missionaries have gone in tribal groups, have given up headhunting.

They've given up cannibalism. They've given up polygamy. I mean, there's all kinds of ways in which Christ, coming to the Gentiles, has increased the quotient of justice in the earth, and that's exactly what this prophecy said the Messiah would do.

You see, Jesus didn't do all of that in his lifetime. All though he began it, but his mission continues through his body of the church. Another prophecy of this sort is Isaiah 61, which Jesus himself quoted about himself in Luke chapter 4. In Isaiah 61, it says in verse 1, the Spirit of the Lord God is upon me.

Just as it said in the passage we just read, the Spirit of the Lord will be upon him. The Spirit of God, the Lord God is upon me because the Lord has anointed me to preach good tidings. That's what the word gospel means.

To the poor, he has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, the opening of the prison to those who are bound, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. So Jesus actually read this passage in the synagogue of Nazareth, and then when he closed the book, he said, today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing. So this is talking about the mission of the Messiah, to proclaim liberty to the captives, to bring healing, to bring justice, to bring righteousness.

That's what Jesus came doing. Now, the prophets also predicted the Messiah being rejected, and while I said that Daniel 9 is the only place where the Messiah is called the Messiah in the Old Testament, I should modify that, because in Psalm 2, the word anointed is there too. It's just in the English Bible.

It usually isn't translated Messiah. It's just says his anointed, but Psalm 2 is quoted, aspects of it are quoted numerous times in the New Testament as a messianic prophecy, and some would say, well, David was really just talking about himself as the Lord's anointed, and there's a sense in which he could have been. He certainly was anointed by God as king, but David is a type of Christ, as we shall see, and the New Testament writers, when Jesus opened their understanding to understand the scriptures, often saw the words of David as words of the Messiah.

They applied to David, but more at a deeper level, the Holy Spirit intended to be the words that the Messiah would use, because he would be another David, a better David. But in Psalm 2, verses 1 and following, it says, why do the nations rage and the people plot a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together against Yahweh and against his anointed, or against his Messiah, saying, let us break their bonds in pieces and cast away their cords from us. So, the nations reject the Messiah, his authority.

This verse, by the way, is quoted in the New Testament by the apostles in their prayer and acts, where they actually quote it as against the Lord and his Messiah. So, they recognize this as a reference to Jesus, that the nations would rage and reject his authority. The rejection of the Messiah is also spoken of in Psalm 118.

In Psalm 118, verse 22, Jesus quoted this, the stone or the rock which the builders rejected has become the head of the corner. Now, Paul and Peter both quote that verse, as did Jesus, as Jesus is the stone that was rejected by Israel as a cornerstone. But God accepted him and built a new building using him as the chief cornerstone.

So, that's Psalm 118 and verse 22, the rejection of the Messiah is predicted. Obviously, everyone, I think, is probably aware that Isaiah 52 and 53 are the most frequently quoted prophetic passages by New Testament writers. That is, of all the prophets, none is quoted in the New Testament as often as Isaiah 53, a prophecy that actually begins in 52 and spills into 53.

But in Isaiah 52 and verse 14, the Messiah says, just as many were astonished at you, his visage was so marred, more than any man, his form more than the sons of men. That is to say, he was beat up. His face was pummeled and beat up.

But then when it spills into the next chapter, it continues in Isaiah 53, verses 7 through 9, excuse me, verses 1 through 3. Isaiah 53, 1 through 3. Who has believed our report? It's a rhetorical question, means not many have. And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, as a root out of dry ground. He has no form or comeliness, and when we see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him.

He is despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and accorded with grief. And we, Israel, hid as it were our faces from him. He was despised and we did not esteem him.

So we can see that the rejection of the Messiah is also a theme of the prophets. Almost certainly Jesus brought that up because the men on the road to Emmaus were discouraged because the one they thought was the Messiah had died, had been rejected. And so when he said, oh, slow of heart to believe all the prophets of Britain, almost certainly he wanted to bring up the scriptures that showed that the prophets had predicted this very thing, his rejection of his death.

Not only his rejection, but also his death. We know that Psalm 22 predicts his death, but we know that because Jesus himself quotes Psalm 22 right from the cross. The first verse, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Is Jesus' cry from the cross.

Of course, it was David's cry in Psalm 22, but Jesus makes it his own and says, this Psalm is mine. This Psalm is me speaking. And as you go through the Psalm later on, by the way, the Psalm, another verse in the Psalm later on is quoted in Hebrews as being about Christ.

There's certainly a strong attestation that it is Messianic. But in Psalm 22, verses 12 through 18, speaking of the death of the Messiah says, many bulls have surrounded me, strong bulls of Bashan have encircled me. They gape at me with their mouths like a raging and roaring lion.

I am poured out like water and all my bones are out of joint. My heart is like wax. It has melted within me.

My strength is dried up like a potsherd. My tongue clings to my jaws. You have brought me to the dust of death for dogs have encompassed me.

The congregation of the wicked have enclosed me. They pierced my hands and my feet. I can count all my bones.

They look and stare at me. They divide my garments among them. And for my clothing, they cast lots.

Now this, as we know, literally happened. Jesus' hands and feet were pierced. His bones were out of joint.

He said, I thirst. His mouth was dried up. And they actually gambled for his clothes at the foot of the cross.

So I mean, this is a very detailed prophecy fulfilled in the death of the Messiah. By the way, it was written by David a thousand years before Christ. So that's pretty far in advance to be able to make such a startlingly accurate prediction.

Of course, we saw Isaiah 53 already, but there's verses there also about his death. And Isaiah 53, verses 7 through 9, says, he was oppressed and he was afflicted. Yet he opened not his mouth.

He was led as a lamb to the slaughter. And as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth. He was taken from prison and judgment.

And who will declare his generation? For he was cut off from the land of the living. That's a Hebraism. He was killed.

For the transgressions of my people, he was stricken. They made his grave with the wicked and with the rich in his death, because he had done no violence, nor was any deceit found in his mouth. So we see that the death of the Messiah clearly predicted, especially in Psalms and in Isaiah, but also in Zechariah 13, 7. As Zechariah 13, 7 says, strike the shepherd and the sheep will be scattered.

When Jesus was in the upper room with his disciples, he said, tonight this scripture will be fulfilled. Strike the shepherd and the sheep will be scattered. Well, the striking of the shepherd is the killing of the Messiah.

And the sheep were scattered. The disciples of Jesus fled. So Zechariah 13, 7 also speaks of the death of the shepherd of the Messiah.

Now that his death would be an atonement for sin is also predicted, not just that he would die, not that he'd be just a tragic martyrdom, but rather he would die as a sacrifice for sin. This is brought out in Isaiah 53, verses five and six. It says, he was wounded for our transgressions.

He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement for our peace was upon him. By his stripes we are healed.

All we like sheep have gone astray. We've turned everyone to his own way. And the Lord laid on him the iniquity of us all.

And then as you go a little further in the same chapter, verses 10 and 11, yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him. He has put him to grief. When you make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed.

He shall prolong his days and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper his hand. He shall see of the labor of his soul and be satisfied by his knowledge. My righteous servant shall justify many for he will bear their iniquities.

So the Messiah would die, but he wouldn't only die. He would die as a price to be paid for the sins of the people. Then of course he'd resurrect.

We just read just now in Isaiah 53 in verse 10, it says he'd die, but it also says he'd prolong his days. How do you prolong his days after he's dead? Well, you do so by rising him from the dead. And certainly Jesus' days have been prolonged.

In Isaiah 53, 12, the last verse of the chapter, it says, therefore I will divide him a portion with the great. Well, this is after he's been dead. How can he be dead? And yet God's going to divide him a portion with the great.

Well, obviously he's going to have to come back alive for that to happen. And he shall divide the spoil with the straw because he poured out his soul to death. And he was numbered with the transgressors and bore the sin of many and made intercession for the transgressors.

So because he died that way, God's going to give him a big reward. He's going to be exalted. And the psalm that is most often quoted in the New Testament about the resurrection of Jesus is Psalm 16.

Both Peter on the day of Pentecost quoted this psalm and Paul in his first recorded sermon at Pisidian Antioch in Acts chapter 13. Both Peter and Paul quoted this psalm as pertaining to the resurrection of Jesus. Now, these are the words of David ostensibly about himself.

But again, as the New Testament writers whose minds Jesus opened so that they could understand the scriptures, they saw these words of the Messiah, not just David. And in Psalm 16, it said in verse 9 through 11, Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoices. My flesh also will rest in hope, for you will not leave my soul in shale or the grave, nor will you allow your Holy One to see corruption.

You will show me the path of life, and your presence is fullness of joy at your right hand are pleasures forevermore. Now it says, you will not leave my soul in shale, that's in the grave, nor will you let your Holy One see corruption. That means decay.

You won't let me decay in the grave. You not only will bring me out of the grave, as everyone will someday be coming out of the grave at the resurrection of the last day, but in his case, I won't even decay in the grave. You won't let me see corruption, that is, see decay, experience decay.

Now Peter made that point that Jesus, because he rose three days after he was buried, did not see corruption. His body didn't decay. And Paul makes the same point.

They both saw as predictions of the resurrection. Now we saw that Psalm 22 is a messianic psalm. I believe the resurrection of Christ is seen there as well.

That's the psalm that talked about his crucifixion in such graphic detail. But in verses 19 through 25, after his crucifixion, it says, but you, O Lord, do not be far from me. Be, O my strength, hasten to help me.

How does someone help you when you're dead? Apparently by raising him from the dead. Deliver me from the sword, my precious life from the power of the dog. Save me from the lion's mouth and from the horns of the wild oxen.

You have answered me. I will declare your name among my brethren. In the midst of the assembly, I'll praise you.

That verse is quoted in Hebrews as being Jesus speaking. You who fear the Lord, praise him and all you descendants of Jacob. Glorify him and fear him, all you offspring of Israel.

For he has not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted, nor has he hidden his face from him. But when he cried to him, he heard. My praise shall be of you in the great assembly.

I will pay my vows before those who fear him. This is David speaking, or the Messiah speaking, after his crucifixion is mentioned. He is now praising God in the congregation.

And that's exactly how the writer of Hebrews understands it. Christ is, he quotes Psalm 22, Jesus said, I will praise you in the midst of the congregation. Christ is in the midst of the Christian congregation.

He's alive. And he, among us, praises God as we sing praises in the congregation. So his resurrection.

Then, of course, the salvation of his people. I'm not going to go into this in detail. There's a lot of verses, especially in Isaiah, that speak of the Messiah as the savior of his people.

Maybe I'll give you one verse from Jeremiah. It'd be one of a genre. There's lots of verses about the Messiah saving his people.

Jeremiah 23, verses five and six. Jeremiah 23, five and six says, Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord that I will raise up to David a branch of righteousness. A king shall reign and prosper and execute justice and righteousness in the earth.

In his days, Judah will be saved and Israel will dwell safely. Now, this is his name by which he will be called. Yahweh Tzidkanu, which means the Lord, our righteousness.

So in his day, God's people will be saved. He's the savior. Again, that's not only here.

That's in lots and lots of Old Testament passages. In Isaiah 45, 17, it says for Israel shall be saved in the Lord, meaning by the Messiah. Now, I will say this.

The prophets also spoke about Jesus reign, which occurs from the right hand of God. So after Jesus rose from the dead, he ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of God where he reigns. Psalm 110 is the chapter most frequently quoted from the Old Testament by New Testament writers.

Jesus quoted it. Many of the apostles quoted it in the book of Acts when they were preaching and also in their epistles. Even the writer of Hebrews quotes it.

I believe even Revelation quotes it if I'm not mistaken, or at least alludes to it. It alludes to it. This is a frequently quoted Psalm, Psalm 110, and it begins with the words, Yahweh said to my master.

Now in English, that is the Lord said to my Lord, but in Hebrew, the first Lord is Yahweh, the second is the word master. So the master is the Messiah. Yahweh said to my master, David says, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.

Now the New Testament teaches that when Jesus ascended after his resurrection, he sat down at the right hand of God. And this prophecy is about that, about him doing that and reigning from there. Another important prophecy about the Messiah sitting down with God and reigning in heaven is in Daniel chapter seven.

The only Old Testament passage is that it uses the term son of man in reference to the Messiah. The term son of man is used very frequently as a generic term for humanity in the Old Testament, but only once in the Old Testament does it refer to the Messiah, son of man. And of course that was Jesus' favorite self-designation in his teaching.

But in Daniel seven, a messianic prophecy to be sure, in verses 13 and 14, Daniel says, I was watching in the night visions and behold one like the son of man coming with the clouds of heaven. And he came to the ancient of days and they brought him near before him. Then to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom that all people's nations languages should serve him.

His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away and his kingdom, the one which shall not be destroyed. Now notice he sees the son of man coming in the clouds. Most teachers I know have thought this refers to his second coming.

It is not his second coming, it's his ascension. Daniel is seeing this from the vantage point of heaven. He's in heaven, he sees what's going on in heaven and he sees the Messiah coming through the clouds as Jesus did ascend up through the clouds.

A cloud hid him from the disciples sight. He disappeared beyond the clouds. Daniel on the other side of those clouds sees him coming to the clouds.

He comes to God, not from God. He's not coming to earth, he's going to heaven. This is the ascension of Christ after his resurrection.

He's brought near to the ancient of days and he's given a throne. Well that's exactly what Psalm 110 said. God said to Jesus, sit at my right hand till I make your enemies your footstool.

Jesus said in I think it's Revelation 3.21 if I'm not mistaken, to him who overcomes, I will grant sit with me upon my throne even as I overcame and I'm seated with my father on his throne. I might have the wrong verse but it is in Revelation 3. Jesus is seated at the right hand of God. This happened according to Psalm 110, according to Daniel chapter 7 and verse 13 and 14.

I don't know if Jesus brought these up with the men on the road to Maias because he hadn't ascended yet and he might have only brought up at this point those scriptures which he had already fulfilled but we see that the messianic scriptures go this far. Beyond his death and resurrection to his actual reign at the right hand of God which began at his ascension continues till this day and Paul says as he anticipates the future second coming at the resurrection and first Corinthians 15 alluding to Psalm 110, he says for Christ must reign meaning where he is now at the right hand of God. He must reign until he's put all his enemies under his feet.

So that's what he's doing. He's reigning and that's what the prophets said. Now I said there's more than just prophecy.

We've traced you know major portions sections of the Old Testament to find prophecies. The first of them in Genesis 3 and the last of them in Malachi 3 and quite a few in the prophets and the psalms and even some in Moses now or even in Jacob's mouth. So we've seen there's a lot of prophecies that Jesus fulfilled but there's more than that.

If Jesus brought out from starting with Moses and the prophets and all the scriptures all the things that pertain to him there's more because in the law of Moses there's laws, there's sacrifices, there's festivals, there are rituals and these two point forward to the Messiah as what we call types. The English word type comes from the Greek word tupos. The New Testament uses this in the tupos to mean a pattern and to refer to something in the Old Testament.

Somebody needs to turn their mic off. All right. A type is a pattern.

It's something in the Old Testament that prefigures or is the same shape as and it looks forward to it anticipates something else. Most cases it's a type of Christ. For example, the word tupos is used in Romans 5.12 where it says that Adam is the type of him who is to come and him who is to come means Jesus.

So Adam was a type of Christ. Well how so? Adam was very different than Christ but not in all respects. In one respect he resembled Christ and that is that Adam started a new humanity which he actually impacted by his own sin adversely so that all the humanity that was in Adam was adversely affected by what he the head of that humanity did.

Christ also started a new humanity, the redeemed humanity, the body of Christ and he as the head of that humanity has impacted all who are part of that humanity so that he and Adam stand in sort of parallel positions. Adam ruined everything, Jesus redeemed everything, but you know that doesn't change the fact that Adam and his impact and the founding of a humanity that's damaged by his behavior is a pattern of what Christ would do only the opposite. Jesus would redeem and be the founder of a new humanity who would be impacted by his good deed.

That's what Paul goes into in Romans 5 from verses 12 and following and it's in verse 12 he uses the word type. Now Paul uses the word type and so does Peter. In other places Paul does for example when he speaks of Israel coming out of Egypt and how they went through the Red Sea, they were baptized into Moses, they followed the cloud and he says in 1 Corinthians 6 these things were a type for us.

I think the most translation example for us but in the Greek it's a tupas. That is the experiences of the Israelites coming out of Egypt and you know how God fed them with bread from heaven and water from a rock. These things are types for us.

They are types of our Christian salvation. They actually happened in the Old Testament. They followed a pattern that is repeated in our salvation.

Peter in 1 Peter 3 and verse 20 says that the flood of Noah was a type of our baptism. He uses the word antitype in that verse 1 Peter 3 20. The word antitype means the fulfillment of a type, antitupas.

It's like a prophecy has a fulfillment, a type has an antitype. The type is the Old Testament thing, the antitype is the New Testament thing that it is a pattern of. So what Peter says baptism is the antitype of Noah's family being saved through the water.

So the salvation of Noah in the ark is a type and our baptism is the antitype of that. So the Bible uses these terms. Now as I said Adam is said to be the first type according to Romans chapter 5 and verse 12.

Adam's a type of Christ and I mentioned how that is but there's more details that are types also. In another sense the animal skins or the animals that God slew to cover the nakedness of sinful Adam and Eve in Genesis 3 21. That shedding of blood to cover their sins with the skins of animals that's a type of Christ blood being shed.

Now I want to say this as you go through the Old Testament people offer animal sacrifices Abel did. His sacrifice was a type of Christ also. In fact I think all the animal sacrifices in the Old Testament were types of Christ and the writer of Hebrews indicates something along those lines.

But the point is that the shedding of animal blood or of blood was necessary for to cover or to atone for human sin. And every time it was done by the command of God it prefigured the fact that Jesus' blood would be shed to cover human sins. So that the blood of the sacrifices in the Old Testament including the blood of Abel's sacrifice and even before that the blood of the animals that were killed to cover Adam and Eve's sin by God.

That's the sacrifice he offered himself and in that sense it's a perfect type of Christ because first of all the blood of those animals and the skins of those animals covered the sins of all humanity because Adam and Eve were all humanity. Later on people who offered sacrifices did it for their own sins or maybe the high priest did it for the sins of Israel. But Adam and Eve were all of humanity and they all sinned and they were all covered by the blood of the animals whose bodies were slain to take the skins to cover them the shame of their nakedness.

It's a picture of Christ's blood. But we shall see that is true as we go through the Old Testament the sacrificial system in general and this would have been relevant to the men on the road to Emmaus because they were surprised that the Messiah had died. But he probably would have gone through lots of these types showing that hey God showed the Messiah has to die.

Someone's got to die for the sins of the world like those animals did. They all pointed forward to the Messiah and his death as some of the prophecies we saw in Isaiah 53 and Psalm 22 suggested that he died as an offering for sins. Well another type as I said of Christ is the the blood of Abel himself not only this sacrifice he offered but his own blood as a righteous man who died because of the sins of his brother.

The reason I see that as so is because it seems to be stated as such in Hebrews 12 24. In Hebrews 12 24 it says that we have come to the blood of cleansing that speaks better things than the blood of Abel. That's what it says in Hebrews 12 24 that the blood of Christ that we have come to speaks better things than the blood of Abel.

Why does it say blood speaks? Well remember when Cain killed Abel and God confronted Cain God said your brother's blood cries from the ground which received it from your hand. Well how could blood wasn't literally crying now what does that mean? It means that the innocent blood that was shed is crying out for redress in the ears of God. That crime was calling out for punishment for redress.

Now the blood of Abel therefore is crying out for condemnation and for judgment of the murderer but Jesus said of those who murdered him father forgive them they don't know what they're doing and his blood shed has a better cry. It doesn't cry out for our condemnation it cries out for our salvation for our forgiveness and the blood of Abel then the innocent man whose blood cried out from the ground is a type of Christ whose blood cries out also only for better things. Now Noah's Ark in Genesis 6 is also a type of Christ as Peter said that the salvation of the eight souls through the flood that is they escaped the judgment of God and survived when the rest of the world was condemned and died.

That's a picture that's a picture of our salvation and of course they were saved in the Ark and were saved in Christ. So the Ark in a sense is a picture of Christ himself. Later on you come to the story of Abraham and of course the promise about Abraham's seed.

There's a sense in which the seed plural of Abraham are a type of the seed singular. That is Israel in many respects is a type of Christ. There's many parallels in the history of Israel to that of Christ.

For one thing we've this is pointed out in Hosea 11. In Hosea 11 it says when Israel was young I loved him and I called my son out of Egypt. Now my son is a reference to Israel.

God is referring to Israel as his son. Remember God told Moses tell Pharaoh Israel is my firstborn that is my son. If you do not let my son go I'm going to kill your firstborn son.

God saw Israel collectively as his son. Now Jesus individually was uniquely the son of Abraham the seed of Abraham and God's son and so when Jesus as a baby goes to Egypt to escape the wrath of Herod and then comes back Matthew in Matthew 2 quotes this passage from Hosea. This fulfilled the prediction out of Egypt I called my son.

What's interesting is Hosea 11 was not a prediction. It was a historical statement. It was not a prediction.

It was a recollection of the exodus. I called Israel my son out of Egypt when he was a child. That is in the infancy of the nation he came out of Egypt but because the New Testament writers saw Israel as a type and a shadow of Christ when Christ came out of Egypt as God's son in his infancy that was the antitype of Israel coming out of Egypt because they were both the seed of Abraham.

Jesus the seed of Abraham par excellence the Messiah. Israel was the seed of Abraham in the generic sense and served as a type of that ultimate seed just like Solomon as the seed of David was a type of Christ the ultimate seed of David. This is how it is.

These seeds of Abraham and David and even of the woman you know they are in a sense plural but then in a secondary sense there's one who epitomizes the whole group and that's the Messiah. Now so Isaac was also a seed of Abraham and therefore a type of Christ but more than that he was a type of Christ in a couple of other ways too because in Genesis chapter 22 God told Abraham to take his son Isaac and sacrifice him on Mount Moriah and as they were going up the hill his son not knowing what was going to happen Isaac said here's the fire and here's the wood but where's the lamb for burnt offering and Abraham said my son the Lord will provide himself a lamb for burnt offering. Now that prediction is spoken of later in the chapter as an actual prophecy that was not fulfilled at the time that it was written.

Now there is a sense in which it was fulfilled in the ram. Instead of Isaac being offered up God provided a ram and said God Abraham don't kill your son here this ram will replace him. The ram that was sacrificed as a substitution for Isaac is like Christ dying as a substitutionary atonement for us.

He's also the fulfillment of the prophecy the short-term fulfillment of the prophecy that the Lord would provide for him self a lamb for burnt offering but as you look further down in Genesis 22 where this story is found in verses 13 and 14 it says then Abraham lifted his eyes and looked and there behind him was a ram caught in a thicket by its horns so Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son and Abraham called the name of the place Yahweh or Jehovah Jireh which means the Lord will provide. Now that's an echo of what he predicted the Lord will provide himself a lamb for burnt offering so when God provided that ram Abraham reiterated the Lord will provide let's call this place the Lord will provide Jehovah Jireh and then Moses who's writing this story hundreds of years later Moses says as it is said to this day now he's telling the story of Abraham who lived 600 years before Moses but Moses writing about the story says he called this place the Lord provide and then Moses says to his generation as it is said to this day on the mount of the Lord it shall be provided in other words Moses said that when Abraham said God will provide a lamb that is still a prediction looking forward to another fulfillment in Moses day it was fulfilled in the ram but that was only a type and a shadow of what most what Moses writing this said now there's another fulfillment and it'll be on the mount of the Lord now Mount Moriah where Isaac was to be offered is the same mountain range where Calvary is where the temple was built in Jerusalem those that mountain range Jesus in the mount of the Lord God provided a lamb himself a lamb for burnt offering in that story Isaac himself is sort of like a type of Christ because he is as the seed of Abraham and uh and there's a sense in which Abram you know is prepared to sacrifice him but the ram also which substitutes for him is a type of Christ so we see this this typology as we'd call it running through these stories in several different directions Isaac also I believe is a type of Christ in the story that's in Genesis 24 about when Abram sought a bride for Isaac and he sent his servant to find a woman and he found Rebekah there are many things in that story that remind Bible scholars of Christ finding a bride the servant who goes looking for her is like the Holy Spirit who comes to the world and woos the bride brings gifts from Christ because the servant brought 10 candles loads of gifts to Rebekah the woman has to choose whether she will marry someone she's never seen she's heard of him but having not seen she loves and she surrenders to him without having seen him and then she goes and is joined with him in marriage as the church chooses to love Christ prior to seeing him but anticipates being joined to him this whole story of seeking a bride for Isaac is usually seen by evangelicals and I think maybe Jesus would have brought this up perhaps I don't know as a type also of Christ and his church now there's many other types I can't give you all of them we're going to run out of time here so I'm not going to give them all let me just I'm going to list them rather than look them up there's a very strong case to be made that Joseph is a type of Christ now the New Testament doesn't say so so we can't be sure of this but Joseph I've seen some teachers bring up as many as 30 different points of comparison between Joseph and Christ thus strongly arguing that Joseph was a type of Christ although he was not a perfect man he's one of the very few heroes of the Bible of which no sins are recorded there are sins of Abraham recorded there's sins of Jacob and Isaac recorded there's sins of even Noah recorded who is a perfect man before the flood there are sins of Moses recorded I mean David but of the heroes of the Bible Joseph is one who although he certainly was like all men a sinner the scripture records no sin of his his story is told as if he could have been just a spotless individual resisted temptation heroically and so forth he was hated by his brothers and rejected by his brothers as Jesus was rejected by the Jews and yet Joseph became the savior of his brothers and of the whole world of course we know the story how God used him to provide food for famine when Evernos would have died but Joseph's being taken away into captivity ended up being for the salvation of the world he took a bride among the Gentiles as Christ has done there's just so many different ways in which Joseph looks a lot like Jesus and therefore it may be that he is a type of Christ Moses certainly is like Jesus he escaped death at infancy a powerful king wanted to kill him as a baby but he escaped it just like Jesus did he was rejected by his brothers remember when he killed the Egyptian the next day one of the Jews said who are you to be a king over us you know we uh are you going to kill us like you did the Egyptian and Moses had to flee for 40 years when he came back of course he then delivered his people so like Joseph he was rejected by the Jews by his brethren and he became their savior and therefore as a type of Christ certainly the Passover lamb that got them out of Egypt is a type of Christ Paul says that in first Corinthians 5 7 Christ our Passover has been slain for us he says first Corinthians 5 7 so you know the Passover lamb is a type of Christ the manna that God fed Israel with when they came out of Egypt is the bread that comes from heaven Jesus gave a discourse about that in John chapter 6 how that he's the bread from heaven it was in the context of the people saying give us manna to eat like Moses did he said well no that's not the bread from heaven I am and uh so the manna in John 16 is uh is a type of Christ as the bread of life the very tabernacle that Israel built that was filled with the glory of God the tabernacle with the shehinah glory it's a type of Christ in the John chapter 1 in verse 14 John said the word became flesh and tabernacled among us and we beheld his glory the Israelites beheld the glory of God in the tabernacle of Moses the deception we saw that in Jesus he was tabernacling with us God was tabernacling with us in the flesh the ark of the covenant in Exodus 25 no doubt a type of Christ it contained the the law that contained Aaron's rod that budded it contained the manna all of these things have reference to Christ in a certain way Aaron's rod that budded in particular is a dead stick that budded fresh almonds and leaves it's like resurrection from the dead Jesus said I am the resurrection and the life I mean the ark contained these things and almost certainly the ark is a type of Christ I mentioned this ritual sacrifices the Old Testament is full of them in Leviticus especially a lot of ritual sacrifices they're all types of Christ the writer of Hebrews identifies that as pretty much the case in Hebrews 9 verses 13 through 14. We have Aaron the high priest he's a type of also he goes into the holy of holies and presents the blood of sacrifice on the mercy seat in Hebrews 9 it says that Jesus has gone into the holy of holies as our great high priest and sprinkled his blood on the mercy seat in heaven so Aaron who did this the high priest was a type of Christ the festivals of Yahweh and Leviticus 33 the the three feasts of the Lord they're celebrated yearly were celebrated yearly in Israel each of them has its own way of being a type of Christ or at least of the salvation he would bring so we see Christ in the sick in the festivals Joshua leading the people in the promised land is a type of Christ he brought the children of Israel into the inheritance as Christ does in the writer of Hebrews chapter 4 he mentions that Christ brings us into God's breast he says Joshua in the Old Testament couldn't really finally do that Joshua brought them into the rest of the promised land but you know the Messiah does more than that he brings us into that eternal rest but Joshua being a type of Christ does sort of a partial job of what he does I've mentioned that David is a type of Christ in many ways very interestingly he was anointed privately as king no one knew about it but when Saul persecuted him some people joined him followed him under persecution at the end when Saul died David was made king publicly this is like Jesus he was anointed king at his baptism there are people who recognize him as such now and follow him in times of persecution and when he is universally recognized uh you know will reign with him so I mean that's David's story is a type of Christ Solomon is a type of Christ in that he is the seed of David who sat on his throne and built a house into his name Jesus does that too Jesus sits on the throne now and he builds a house Jesus upon this rock I will build my church and Peter said we are like living stones being built up a spiritual house a holy priesthood several references in the New Testament refer to us as the temple of the Holy Spirit of the house of God Solomon built that in the Old Testament but that was a type of Christ who builds his church his his temple of the Holy Spirit us out of living stones Isaiah is a type of Christ we know this because what he says about his sons the writer of Hebrews quotes as if Jesus is saying it Isaiah 8 18 Isaiah speaks about himself Hebrews 2 13 quotes it as the words of Christ so Isaiah speaks as a type of Christ Isaiah had a son himself named Meher Shalel HaShabas he too is a type of Christ both of them are called Emmanuel a prophecy about Christ in Isaiah 7 14 and following seems to have a short term fulfillment in Isaiah's son Meher Shalel HaShabas in the very next chapter and yet Matthew 1 tells us that that prophecy in Isaiah 7 has its ultimate fulfillment in Jesus being born of a virgin so Isaiah and his son are both types of Christ Jonah certainly is Jesus said as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the fish so shall the son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth Jonah is a picture of Christ in his death and resurrection Jesus said that in Matthew 12 40 and I've already mentioned that Israel is a type of Christ Israel is God's firstborn in the Old Testament Jesus is God's firstborn in the New Testament Israel is the seed of Abraham in the Old Testament Christ is the seed of Abraham in the New Testament Israel is the vine in the Old Testament Isaiah 5 Jesus is the true vine in John 15 Israel is the servant of Yahweh in several passages in Isaiah which we call the the servant songs in Isaiah Israel is said to be the servant but morphs in these prophecies into one person who is the servant who is the Messiah and the New Testament quotes these servant passages and applies them to Jesus although Israel was the servant in the Old Testament the failure of the servant of the original servant caused one man to be raised up among them who was the servant of Yahweh in whom these things are fulfilled so Israel had all these titles and roles in the Old Testament that are now assigned to Jesus in the New Testament and that's all the types that I have to give you we had a lot of prophecies and now Jesus is seen in types and shadows throughout the Old Testament now one last thing I know we've gone a little late uh Mike told you we'd go a little late so I thought I'd let him become a prophet and uh fulfill that prophecy uh I just want to talk a little bit about one other thing I doubt if Jesus brought this part up so we may be getting beyond the boundaries of the road to emace but if we're going to talk about all the ways in which the Old Testament speaks about Christ he was revealed in human appearances in the Old Testament called theophanies the word theophany comes from two Greek words theos means God and phaneo means appearance a theophany theos phaneos uh it means it means an appearance of God or we call them Christophanies appearances of Christ most Christian scholars believe these theophanies were Christ or we would say the second person of the Trinity sent from God and yet was himself God speaking as he's as if he is God and yet distinguished from God in some ways too in a mysterious way just as is the word in John 1 1 he is God and he's with God and these appearances uh usually human appearances they can be other forms too there can be a pillar of cloud there can be a fire in a bush there can be things that are not human appearance but mostly human appearances are called theophanies or Christophanies and these are Christ apparently coming the first of these is in Genesis 14 when Abram meets Melchizedek I won't get into this in detail but it's Hebrews chapter 7 that gives us all the explanation that lets us know that Melchizedek is a type or not a type but of an appearance of Christ in a theophany now theophany is simply God appearing in a human-like form physical form he could eat touch wrestle as he did with Jacob he's physical but he's not an actual man this is not the case of a man who's born of a woman and lives out his lifetime and dies in fact it says of Melchizedek in Hebrews chapter 7 he is without beginning of days without end of life having neither father nor mother but like Jesus himself uh endures a priest continually he lives forever Melchizedek lives forever didn't have a beginning or end but there was an appearance that he made to Abraham in Genesis 14 and from the clues given to us and there are many of them in Hebrews 7 we have to say this this had to be a theophany of Christ unless the writer of Hebrews was mistaken I don't believe he was now Jesus said to the Jews and at the end of John chapter 8 he said your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day and he saw it and they said you're not yet 50 years old and when did you see Abraham now Jesus answer was before Abraham was I am but the interesting thing is Jesus said Abraham saw him they said when did he see you you're not old enough to have seen Abraham well I think perhaps when Abraham met Melchizedek I think that may be when Jesus referring to Melchizedek I believe was in fact Christ prior to his incarnation not being born as a man and living as a man but appearing as a man briefly for an encounter with a man Abraham we have a similar case when a man wrestled with Jacob all night long this is in Genesis 32 verses 24 through 30 this was a physical encounter it was a wrestling match at the end of it the man touched Jacob's thigh and he was physically crippled now in the wrestling match Jacob said tell me your name and the man he was wrestling with said why do you ask after my name seen as wonderful now the man then left him crippled and Jacob said I've seen God face to face and my life is preserved he named the place pethiel which means face of God because of that encounter if that was God and it was a man wrestling with him and it was a physical encounter uh we we could argue this is a Christophany and most people would say most Christians would say it was the angel in the burning bush is called the angel of the Lord now the term the angel of the Lord the angel of or not an angel Lord but a specific angel Lord is used frequently in the Old Testament and almost all Christians believe that these are theophanies when when the angel of the Lord shows up and does or says something he speaks as if he is God and he acts like he's God I mean he speaks in the first person pronouns as God and based on this fact Christian theologians believe that the angel of the Lord they usually believe the answer is a theophany of Christ himself for example he the angel of the Lord appeared to Hagar and spoke of what he as God would do for her son Ishmael this is in Genesis 16 verses 7 through 13 he also appeared to Abraham telling him not to sacrifice his son and spoke as if he himself was God but was the angel of the Lord who said don't kill the son don't do it I've seen that you passed the test the angel in the burning bush is called the angel of the Lord and certainly speaks as if he's God when Balaam went to do the wrong thing the angel of the Lord stood before him and the donkey saw him before Balaam did and the angel speaks as if he is God probably Christ most would say there's also other references the angel of the Lord interestingly the messenger that appeared to Manoah the father of Samson the angel of the Lord speaks as if he's God in Judges 13 3 through 21 um I'm skipping over some but um there's also that one that Joshua encountered in the sixth chapter or the end of fifth chapter of Joshua before he invaded Jericho he saw somebody who identified himself as the commander of the Lord's armies and he said take your shoes off your feet because you're on holy ground well what make it holy would be that he was in the presence of God just like Moses was told to take his sandals off at the burning bush because he was in the presence of God this commander of the Lord's host is probably a theophany of Christ and there are a few others the angel of the Lord who appeared to Elijah a couple of times the angel of the Lord who slaughtered the Assyrian invaders while they slept outside Jerusalem in the days of Hezekiah the angel of the Lord frequently mentioned there's also of course um a fourth man that appeared in the furnace of fire with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego the three men were thrown into the fire furnace and Nebuchadnezzar seen in there he said I I thought we threw three there I see four and one of them looks like a son of the gods actually in our translation process the son of God but uh there's a good chance that being a but the point is he seems superhuman and uh many Christians would argue that that was Jesus there too so we have in the Old Testament abundant uh appearances in one way or another of Jesus not only in these theophanies but certainly in many prophecies that actually prophesied most of the important things in the life of Jesus from his birth to his resurrection and reign in heaven and then of course there's these types that the law has in the in the rituals the sacrifices and all those things and so many things in the tabernacle and so many persons like David and Moses are types of Christ so that in a sense through all of these God was teaching in the Old Testament the Messiah what he would be like including uh some clear references to his death and his resurrection which was the thing that was that that was the stumbling block for the men on the road to him is they we thought that we had hoped they said we had hoped that he was the one who would redeem Israel uh yeah but we've given up hope on that now because he died well wait a minute not so fast let's go through the Old Testament see what exactly we are we know about the Messiah especially from the prophets but also from the types what about Jonah he's a type three days and three nights in the heart of a whale belly of the whale like the son of man three days three nights the heart of the earth there are numerous things Jesus could have brought up from these different categories I would say it's I I find it unlikely that Jesus made reference to the theophanies only because I'm not sure that those specific cases would suit the purpose he was seeking to accomplish in his sermon to them but certainly the prophecies and the types because they're beginning with Moses now there's some prophecies in the books of Moses but what four or five about Jesus but there's tons of types of Jesus and I'm sure that the sacrificial lambs the Passover um you know those kinds of things uh Jesus would have brought up as pictures of his atoning death so while it is impossible obviously for us to know precisely what Jesus included and what he omitted we do have a pretty good idea of what we could include uh if we were seeking to comb through the Old Testament and and call from it all the things that we learn about Jesus before he was ever even born and the remarkable thing is of course after his birth his life followed the pattern of those types and followed the fulfillment of those prophecies uh remarkably as no one ever has other than Jesus in history and frankly no one can in the future although the Jews still look for the Messiah as a future being the timing of the Messiah's coming is unambiguous in scripture in the Old Testament and Jesus came at that time it's too late for anyone else to do that so obviously if those scriptures are true Jesus is the Messiah and his death resurrection notwithstanding uh they also were part of what was predicted thank you Steve that was incredible I really appreciate that that was great good to have you Steve you want to close us in prayer thank you father for your word and for Jesus and for how you have tied together all the things that for centuries your people anticipated in the Messiah and brought them to reality in Christ and we are so privileged to live in the time after his coming where we can see those connections and we can appreciate the whole story uh more fully even as Jesus said blessed are your eyes that see and your ears that hear from many righteous men and prophets desired to see these things and did not see them and we do see them we are fortunate to able to look in hindsight and see much more clearly than the Jews before the time of Christ could see by foresight and so father I pray your Holy Spirit will just impress upon us afresh how firm our faith in Christ can be based upon the many infallible proofs that you've given and we ask it in Jesus name amen