The OT Promise: The Prophets & The Promise

 THE Prophecy THE Promise Isaiah 7:14 We live in a culture obsessed with moralism and status’ ability to bring us joy but consistently unable to pull it off and never left happy from it, thus were unsatisfied people because we look within this world for joy and confidence. Have you noticed that?   We want to find someone who can be moral, and prop them up, then feel like maybe we can do it too, if they are.  We want to prop someone up who is famous and powerful and assume they’re happy and if we can attain to that we’d be happy too.  We believe that this life can be perfect and can perfectly satisfy us we may know academically that its can’t but we believe it with our attitudes, actions, and allow our emotions and joy to balance on the promises of this world - it is a lie that sets us up for disappointment, depression, and failure. We’re looking to our politicians and pop culture to be our moral examples for us, we’re looking for our Hollywood stars to be happy with status, so that we can follow someone who has arrived, and surely they’re happy, right…. Officials fail us, Hollywood stars give their opinion, they start a foundation and we’re back on track to look up to people again, we feel settled because what’s right is being done and so maybe this living on top thing is something to strive for because all is right now, right? - But it will collapse again and we’ll yet again be looking for a pop culture savior. Nothing in this world can deliver on our trust.   If you put your hopes for joy onto another person, they’ll fail.  They’re just another person like you - we all need to be looking to God’s word to understand Him - and we’ll be constantly pointed to Jesus, His son, the Messiah prophesied about all across Scripture, promised since the beginning, and then be worshippers.  When this becomes who we are, we’re free to have a simply joy in life because it’s what God’s given us, it’s not our everything which must deliver our Joy rather it’s a gift in time from God that we can get to use to celebrate him, joy in it, and share about His truth with others. And so as we do that, as we look to His word for us in this brief life we see the message of the Bible allows the flaws and failures of people to shine through, and as they faithfully shine - we see continually that we, of ourselves, cannot please God.   But, amazingly we’re not a failure because of this - the Old Testament shows clearly that God never asked us to be righteousness, that was our idea, we were never to look to culture, politicians, Hollywood, those were our ideas - rather God’s desire was for us to look to His son.   As we’ll come to see today the Message of the Old Testament is God’s holiness demands a third party intervention for us who could only fail to embody it - and so the message drives us to Jesus.  With great precision, purpose, and clarity to the whole of the Bible centers on Jesus.  He’s the hub of Scripture which either points to Him, looks at him in a time in this life, or looks back to Him telling us how to live in His freshly impacted world, in His church.   This will become important as we read from the book of Hebrews. · Jesus is the greater Isaac when the angel steps in and provides the sacrifice for Abraham when God told him to sacrifice his only son, Isaac was sacrificial but insufficient - Abraham and Isaac pointed to something. · Jesus is the last Adam who passed his test in the garden, where the first Adam failed.   · Jesus is the perfect Abel who was slain and his blood cries out - Abel’s death pointed to Christ’s · Jesus is the greater a Jacob who was wounded but walked away blessed Jacob spoke to Jesus mediation.  · Jesus is the greater Moses standing between God and man with a new covenant Moses pointed on to Christ. · Jesus is a king of greater importance than David who said a giant - though victory was bleak, David’s victory is minimized in Jesus’ finished work. · Jesus is a greater Jonah spending 3 days in the belly but saved more than Nineveh but rather all that God would give Him.   · When Hosea pursued and married a bride who would be unfaithful even in the future - he showed God’s love that would play out for us in Christ.   · Jesus is the greatest place for our hopes, the only sure place for our hopes to be placed.  Because Jesus is the promise of God, to defeat sin. All of this is prophecy the message of Jesus is begged for across scripture because nothing in this world can deliver on our trust - Jesus is unique, Jesus is fresh air, Jesus is God’s given promise who can, will, and does satisfy.   This week we look to God’s prophecy and see that isn’t on shaky ground, like when I predict sports outcomes (I said Foles would fold and the Eagles wouldn’t make it to the playoffs) but God - is prophetic even through the wild-card lives of people - as we’ve said before God is a fourtheller, not a foreteller.  He doesn’t guess He commands.  When we see that we can stop chasing pop culture saviors and hoping soothing in this life can deliver on our trust. The prophetic book of Isaiah is a book written 700 years or so before Christ would come, yet it speaks so clearly to Jesus’ coming.  It gives prophecy about this birth that would be later fulfilled and specifically shown as fulfilled in Jesus is where we come to know our trust can rest on God and that only He can deliver on our trust. Isaiah 7:14 reads:  Isaiah 7:14 (ESV) 14 Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. Maybe you’ve been to a Christmas service, and so you’ve heard that before.  But back up hear it freshly - a virgin will have a son.  Even with a rudimentary knowledge of biology that should sound strange and come across as quite a claim. And then you look to Matthew 1:22-23 (one verse past my favorite passage, Matthew 1:21)  Matthew 1:22–23 (ESV) 22 All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet:  23 “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son,  and they shall call his name Immanuel”  (Which means, God with us). The Promise of Jesus was prophecy since the beginning, from Genesis 3 God has promised to undo what man has done - and provide a way for sin to be defeated and make a way to re-join us to Himself - it’s a prophesied promise. Again in this book of Isaiah, God’s prophet who tells of the coming messiah and the messianic age, who talks about God’s sovereignty and fulfillment of prophecy in Isaiah 53 talks about a suffering servant.  He speaks through the prophet of a suffering servant as though in the present tense (though it would be some 700 years before the servant came) the suffering servant who would come through a virgin birth. Then verse 12 says - he bore the sins of many… Who is the suffering servant, to be born of a virgin, who’ll bear sins?!  This is quite a claim for Isaiah’s readers, right!  Wouldn’t you be paying attention to this? Let’s look ahead to Acts and we’ll get to glance back at Isaiah: Acts 8:26–39 (ESV) Philip and the Ethiopian Eunuch 26 Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, “Rise and go toward the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” This is a desert place.  27 And he rose and went. And there was an Ethiopian, a eunuch, a court official of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, who was in charge of all her treasure. He had come to Jerusalem to worship  28 and was returning, seated in his chariot, and he was reading the prophet Isaiah.  29 And the Spirit said to Philip, “Go over and join this chariot.”  30 So Philip ran to him and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet and asked, “Do you understand what you are reading?”  31 And he said, “How can I, unless someone guides me?” And he invited Philip to come up and sit with him.  32 Now the passage of the Scripture that he was reading was this:  “Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter  and like a lamb before its shearer is silent,  so he opens not his mouth.  33 In his humiliation justice was denied him.  Who can describe his generation?  For his life is taken away from the earth.”  34 And the eunuch said to Philip, “About whom, I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?”  35 Then Philip opened his mouth, and beginning with this Scripture he told him the good news about Jesus.  36 And as they were going along the road they came to some water, and the eunuch said, “See, here is water! What prevents me from being baptized?”  38 And he commanded the chariot to stop, and they both went down into the water, Philip and the eunuch, and he baptized him.  39 And when they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord carried Philip away, and the eunuch saw him no more, and went on his way rejoicing. If Jesus wasn’t the point of the Old Testament and wasn’t the son of God and isn’t savior, then what we have is an old book with some great ideas, and some weird stuff that we’ll just have to ignore.  But that is NOT the case, and Jesus is the point.  When you realize the Holiness of God that is called out for worshippers to even be able to approach God in the sacrificial system, you realize it was all building up to Jesus, the need for some mediator between us and our creator God.  It was all showing the need for Jesus, pointing the way to Jesus - then, all of the recorded record of scripture makes perfect since.   And you become blown away by the fact that books separated by hundreds upon hundreds of years, written by people who never met - all tells one story.  Because it’s God’s story - all designed to show the need for Jesus.  It’s a need that every single person has, then, today, and for all the ages that God’s should allow us to live.  We all need to be connected to our God and Christ is that connection - he’s the once perfect sacrifice needed to be joined to a Holy God.  And so, if everything was pointing to Christ, so that we’d see his fulfillment more clearly and have a final way to God, then see like our study has allowed that the patriarchs pointed to Jesus’ line and God’s sovereignty.  That the priesthood and the law pointed to God’s holiness and the way to know and worship him in the age of the priesthood, and finally the prophecy pointing through time and all of these giving the promise that would come and satisfy and make since of it all - Messiah Jesus.  The Scriptures constantly point to God’s faithfulness to His word, with example after example of God doing the seeming impossible in fulfilling His word - so that we’d have a sure confidence in Him and so that we’d know we can trust this word with the weight of our hope.   · We know we’re vulnerable, we’re at the seeming whim of whether (which Jesus could control with a word Matthew 8:27)  · We’re left confused by evil and a spiritual world we cannot see (which Jesus could control with a word (Matthew 8:16) But the promise of the one, who would be crushed for us, bruised (Genesis 3), and pierced - born of a virgin (Isaiah 53) He makes way for us to know God.  Because of Him we can enter into the Holy place of God with confidence (Hebrews 10:19), in what - not in our selves fully placed in Him. Church that confidence is ours.  Not from politicians (oh goodness not that), not in Hollywood (God help us) but rather because messiah Jesus promised from the beginning, suffered and died that all sin of those given by the Father would be eliminated and His righteousness would be provided. Does that promise not give you confidence?  Supernatural confidence?   Let’s not hope in others - let’s hope in God, in His promised Messiah who is Jesus.  Have you placed your faith, and hope, and trust, and all your confidence in Him?   I pray you have or I pray you will - right now.  And like that eunuch who understood for the first time who was being spoken of in Isaiah 53 - who though he worked for royalty in a high place, that his hope couldn’t rest there and that what Jesus did He did for him.  He was impacted and baptism had to happen in that moment.  I pray that you would realize that what Jesus did, he did for you. And then, as you continue on in scripture to know God and be consistently amazed by Him, that you’ll come to know this life as secondary, God as primary and that you’ll be free to have joy here in God, not in this world or it’s systems, it’s starts or it’s politicians, but that you’re hope and joy would rest solidly in God, now.  And that you’d know - the best is yet to come! Church - let’s allows the nature of God in scripture to give us confidence in Him and His plan.  Let’s allow knowledge of our forgiveness on the perfect Christ to give us confidence that we have so much more than anything in this life can deliver - and we’ll be free.  Free to have a joy that points to God because it stems from God - only He is that savior that can deliver on our trust, let’s trust Him and then we’ll worship Him, let’s do that together now as we sing! Promise Delivered The OT Promise: The Prophets & The Promise: THE Prophecy THE Promise Pastor John Weathersby Transcend Church 5 of 5 Sunday1/21/2017