Where Is Jesus In The Old Testament

Introduction

Everyone who has ever done a read the bible in a year plan knows the agony of hitting Leviticus or Judges or Chronicals and just wonders what the heck

We want to know God better

We want to see our walk with Christ grow deeper

And there we are reading Leviticus 11:9–12 ““This is what you may eat from all that is in the water: You may eat everything in the water that has fins and scales, whether in the seas or streams. But these are to be abhorrent to you: everything in the seas or streams that does not have fins and scales among all the swarming things and other living creatures in the water. They are to remain abhorrent to you; you must not eat any of their meat, and you must abhor their carcasses. Everything in the water that does not have fins and scales will be abhorrent to you.”

You should detest lobster and shrimp?

How does that help me in the face of suffering or confusion or anxiety?

How does that point to Jesus? and the hope i need today from Him?

Or there is my personal favorite 2 Kings 2:23–25 “From there Elisha went up to Bethel. As he was walking up the path, some small boys came out of the city and jeered at him, chanting, “Go up, baldy! Go up, baldy!” He turned around, looked at them, and cursed them in the name of the Lord. Then two female bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the children. From there Elisha went to Mount Carmel, and then he returned to Samaria.”

Besides the eternal word of God telling us male pattern baldness is hard for some of us and we need shown compassion and affirmation instead of ridicule….im not sure how this makes much about Jesus

Let alone how it gives me hope that this life doesn’t get the last word

In studying the Holy Sprit the last 2 weeks we learned the Holy Spirits role is to remind us of Jesus

And we saw the man way he does that is by reminding us of Jesus in all of the bible

What so many seek in fake expressions of the spirit in the goosebumps and feels we are actually told the true way to find it

It is in seeing Jesus in all of scripture where it happens

But where is He in the Old Testament?

To begin to find Him we have to unlearn what we were told the bible was

We Need a Better Story

We saw last week we are people of story

We believe living according to some script will get us to the life we long for

We believe something will save us from the ache and regret and suffering and make us whole

The bible is the better story but we need first : a better story from the church

I was told that the bible stood for Basic Instruction Before Leaving Earth in church when I came to faith

That is an awful thing to say and even Jesus would disagree

If that is the case then the bible is simply a rule book and life hack manual where I AM the master of my destiny

Follow the handbook

Apply the life hacks

Make every page about me

That is the story from the church becasue the Jesus the church sells is simply a remedy for our guilt to get us out of hell

I hear is blasting from a loud speaker at every Georgia game we go too

A man with a mic is yelling that we are all sinners under God’s wrath going to hell and we need to repent as if anyone knows what the heck repent even means

I wonder what his advice would be if someone said I am in

It would no doubt be read the basic instruction before leaving earth

The broken story of the bible the church has sold is a sad reduction of the story of reality it is

You are a sinner and should feel guilt

You need to tell Jesus sorry so he saves you from going to hell

Jesus is nothing more then the alleviator of your guilt

If that is the gospel it misses the ache we have from following broken scripts

That is what “the gospel” has become

The gospel isn’t everything as Tim Keller says

Passing by that man at the Georgia games are broken kids who have given in to hook up culture given their bodies away and are just as alone as they were before …but only now more broken

There are young men 18, 19 addicted to porn

Kids taking their first drink that day that will lead to the destuction of being an alcoholic to numb the pain

There are parents with wayward kids who just want 3 hours of football to escape the tears

There are people like me walking by him

Carrying more crosses then I can bear with the pain of unmet expectaions of what i thought life would be

All of the masses longing for a better story

Longing for a better me not a second chance

Longing for our hearts to burn with hope

I don’t need David and Goliath moralized to say I am David and i have Goliath’s in my life and if i have enough faith i can slay the giants in my life

I need a better David who fights and kills the demons I can’t that I can rest behind

I need my heart to burn with hope, with comfort, with peace, with the promise that even my own failings don’t get the last word

Those college kids need to know that the gospel that man is shouting isn’t everything

The bible is the great unfolding of history and hope for what is coming

It is the epic we long for and the ever after everything this world offers pales in comparison too

We need our hearts to burn with that when hook up culture fails, when the pride and control fail, when the drink or the drugs fail, when the what if’s keep us up

Where is Jesus

And it is in seeing Jesus in the Old Testament that makes our hearts burn

In Luke 24 we see some disciples who are in the brokenness we know

Failed dreams unmet expectaions and no savior to cling to ….they think

They had read the bible as basic instruction before leaving earth and in the face of their new normal they had nothing

Hope deffered had made their hearts sick, Proverbs 13:12 says

Heart sick men

And here comes Jesus

And what does do

Luke 24:25–27 “He said to them, “How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Wasn’t it necessary for the Messiah to suffer these things and enter into his glory?” Then beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted for them the things concerning himself in all the Scriptures.”

Heart sick men seeing Jesus in the Old Testament and what was the impact of it

Verse 32-

Christian Standard Bible Chapter 24

32 They said to each other, “Weren’t our hearts burning within us while he was talking with us on the road and explaining the Scriptures to us?”

we need the story that can make our hearts burn within us not in some la la land life

We need the story that can make our hearts burn within us in the trenches of the human experience

We need the story that Jesus is better

A better lover of your soul then the one night stand or hook up culture

A better hope then temporary escape in a bottle

A better peace then control and pride

We need the themes of return from exile, a better sacrafice, a better happily ever after that is coming

All of the Old Testament is about that Jesus and those themes that point to the real Gospel

But we need to learn how to see it

A Better Adam

The most beautiful realization I have come to is that Jesus is my second Adam not simply a second chance

Adam failed at a tree when he believed the lies from the enemy

At a tree he fell in disobedience and was a slave to sin and his own funeral one day

It cost him even his son Abel when he was mudered

WIth the wild animals in perfectionof Eden he fell through disobedience

All of that simply pointed to the second Adam who would come and kill the dragon and get us home

God promised it that day Genesis 3:15

A child would come to do what we could never do

There is Jesus in Mark 1:12–13 “Immediately the Spirit drove him into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, being tempted by Satan. He was with the wild animals, and the angels were serving him.”

The same Satan with the same lies

But a different result

Obedience to the Father

And what was the result?

For a moment Eden was restored in a middle eastern desert

Don’t miss this….He was with the wild animals

Just like Adam was …

Everything sad will come untrue because Jesus is the second Adam not simply a second chance

And where did he crush the serpents head?

Adam faile at the foot of a tree

The second Adam won your future with His death on a tree

Seeing that should make our hearts burn within us

And in seeing Jesus in Genesis changes everything

A Better Exodus

We are taught to think God flexes through the plagues in Exodus because Pharoh wouldn’t let the people go

That isn’t the root of it

The response from God was an answer to his question

Who is god that I should answer Him?

Haven’t we all asked that in our ubelief?

What should i do it God’s way

who is He?

Philippians 2:6–11 “who, existing in the form of God, did not consider equality with God as something to be exploited. Instead he emptied himself by assuming the form of a servant, taking on the likeness of humanity. And when he had come as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death— even to death on a cross. For this reason God highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow— in heaven and on earth and under the earth— and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

God has revealed who He is and why we should love Him in Jesus

he has revealed the scandal of his saving

He has revealed His ultimate plan to end our exile in a world that isn’t how its supposed to be

He has revelealed in Isaiah that He would be the suffering servant to end our wandering

Center Church: Doing Balanced, Gospel-Centered Ministry in Your City Chapter 1: The Gospel Is Not Everything

The gospel is good news announcing that we have been rescued

And turn to Jude 5 “Now I want to remind you, although you came to know all these things once and for all, that Jesus saved a people out of Egypt and later destroyed those who did not believe;”

Who led the exodus in the Old Testament?

He was saying this is just a taste of what I am going to do

Jesus is not merely patterned and promised in the Old Testament; he is present.

The return to home from life as exiles is on it’s way to an end

That is the story you are in

And as miraculous as the splitting of sea was in Israels saving was ….it only pointed to a greater exodus

The greatest Jail break the universe will ever know

When Jesus kicked down the doors of the one who took us captive …bound him up…and plundered his house

Colossians 1:11–14 “being strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, so that you may have great endurance and patience, joyfully giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the saints’ inheritance in the light. He has rescued us from the domain of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son he loves. In him we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”

Let the better exodus of the Gospel make your heart burn within you so that you have endurance as a exile

Exodus points to Jesus

When you see Him in it your heart will burn

A Better Sacrifice

Ok those are cool but surely Jesus can’t be in Leviticus

Hearing how we are sinners if we eat a fried shrimp Po Boy

Part of the law is about God’s people being seperate from the lost people around them and thats a different topic for another day

Jesus is reflected  , not as a literal figure, but as the fulfillment of the sacrificial system, priesthood, and laws that the book describes

Leviticus 16:20–23 ““When he has finished making atonement for the most holy place, the tent of meeting, and the altar, he is to present the live male goat. Aaron will lay both his hands on the head of the live goat and confess over it all the Israelites’ iniquities and rebellious acts—all their sins. He is to put them on the goat’s head and send it away into the wilderness by the man appointed for the task. The goat will carry all their iniquities into a desolate land, and the man will release it there. “Then Aaron is to enter the tent of meeting, take off the linen garments he wore when he entered the most holy place, and leave them there.”

The sacrifice all pointed to Jesus

What happens on the day of atonement ?

The priest enters into the presence of God where no one could survive except this one day

The sacrafice is made and the sins of the people are carried away as far as the east is from the west

Then what is Aaron to do?

take off the linen garments he wore when he entered the most holy place, and leave them there.”

Interesting because when John looks into the tomb of Jesus what does he see left behind?

The linen grave close of Jesus

The ultimate sacrafice has been made for you

A Better Promise (the Prophets..”in those days”)

There is a part to your Old Testament called the Prophets

There are major ones like Jeremiah

And there are minor ones like Hosea

They are speaking to God’s people in the midst of sin and its consequences and suffering

There is a theme in them all

It is the phrase “In Those Days”

It was the promise that the suffering and running to sin doesn’t get the last word

Hosea is a book like that

And there is that Phrase…in those days…

Hosea 2:14–17 “Therefore, I am going to persuade her, lead her to the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her. There I will give her vineyards back to her and make the Valley of Achor into a gateway of hope. There she will respond as she did in the days of her youth, as in the day she came out of the land of Egypt. In that day— this is the Lord’s declaration— you will call me, “My husband,” and no longer call me, “My Baal.” For I will remove the names of the Baals from her mouth; they will no longer be remembered by their names.”

Not only should leading Israel out into the wilderness make you think of someone else led into the wilderness …hint hint Jesus as the True Israel

But what days is He talking about…

What day could possibly be coming that would show scandalous grace to all of us ?

What kind of husband woos back an adulterous bride?

Hosea points to Jesus through God's promise to allure, redeem, and restore His people from a "wilderness" of sin to a loving, "husband"-like relationship with Him

This is seen in Jesus's work as the ultimate "husband" who woos the Church, takes away her "iniquity," and brings her to a place of rest and renewed love.

Jesus is the fulfillment of the prophecy by acting as the representative who bears the covenant's curse and redeems the church, his bride, from slavery to sin

Ed Welch says “The gospel is the story of God covering his naked enemies, bringing them to the wedding feast, and then marrying them rather than crushing them.”

Exile and return through the ultimate husband dying for His bride

Ending where we started

We are broken people desperate for our hearts to burn

And we are not left to ourselves to figure out how to have that happen

It was in showing Christ in all of the Old Testament that those first disciples felt it

And it is the same way for us

Here is a simple framework for how Christ is at the heart of the Scriptures: he is patterned, promised, and present from Genesis onward.

Even as you read your New Testament we should be using a look behind method

Where Have I seen this before ? What was a detail like “and he was with the wild animals” in Mark?

Because it’s all about Jesus

1 Peter 1:11 “They (speaking of the Old Testament authors) inquired into what time or what circumstances the Spirit of Christ within them was indicating when he testified in advance to the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow.”

Who even inspired them to write the Old Testament?

Christ

Glenn Schrivner says: The flood and the ark, the Passover and the Red Sea, the wilderness and the Promised Land, exile and return, war and peace, kingdom and kings, prophets and priests, the temple, its sacrifices, and its rituals, wisdom in death and in life, songs of lament and rejoicing, songs of intimate love, husband and bride, the lives of faithful sufferers and the blood of righteous martyrs — the Old Testament is extraordinarily Jesus-shaped.

In our ache of the human experience the Gospel is more then a remedy for guilt

It is the hope that makes our hearts burn with hope at a graveside

I think of the thousands of broken people at a Georgia game being yelled at about hell

I pray there is another voice on that campus and in our lives

Teaching them and us to see Jesus on every page

That is the hope we need

We need the epic of the One who came to free us and make everything sad come untrue

Lets Pray