Sermon Tone Analysis

Following on from this morning about the 400 silent years when there was no Word from God until the angel Gabriel broke into human history again with the news that John the Baptist was to be born to elderly parents and how we need to turn to the Scriptures to hear from God today, I wanted to speak of the hundreds of prophecies that speak of Jesus Christ’s first advent.

The fact that there are all these prophecies mean that we can truly rely upon the Scriptures as God’s Word.

In the passage Irena read we see Jesus walking with two of His disciples and He explained to them all the words concerning Himself and how it was necessary for Him to be born and to die and to rise again.

We may wish to have been there whilst He was doing this but we couldn’t be but we do have the Scriptures for ourselves to check them out.

Jesus is the fulfilment of Old Testament prophecy, indeed the whole of the Old Testament is pointing to Jesus.

I have a list of 365 prophecies in relation to Jesus and perhaps many more can be said to be about Him as the whole of the Old Testament is forward looking to the time of Jesus in his first as well as His second coming.

Indeed,

Augustine of Hippo said over 1600 years ago

“the Old Testament is the New Testament concealed; the New Testament is the Old Testament revealed”

Jesus is the fulfilment of the promise to Abraham that blessing would come upon the Gentiles (Gal 3:14) and He fulfilled God’s promises through the prophets:

As Jews grew up they would learn the Scripture.

They would refer to it all the time so that as they grew up they knew the Scriptures inside out – of course the Scriptures to which we refer is the OT.

They would recite OT over meals and at events – they really did know their Scriptures.

They also knew that one day a mysterious Man would turn up who was going to fulfil the covenants promised by God to Israel.

The Jewish women would wonder whether they would be the mother of the Messiah.

Why?

It was inbuilt every time they celebrated the Passover.

It was the woman who started the festival off by applying fire to the candle at the Passover for there can be no redemption without a woman.

This man that they waited for was called by many names: that is, titles for the man they were looking for:

· The Branch

· The Stem of Jesse

· The Servant of the Lord

· The Son of Man

· The Rock

· The Corner

· The Nail

· Emmanuel

· The Shepherd

· The Messiah (Christ)

Thinking of that last one particularly, Messiah, means Anointed One.

What is so special about that?

Well, Samuel, a prophet, was one of those whom God sent to anoint people with oil.

And when you were anointed by him on God’s say so it would radically change your life’s direction, you knew that the moment you were anointed you had changed your job.

You would either be anointed to be

1) Prophet,

2) Priest, or

3) King

But the Messiah was to be all three in one:

Prophet:

First, what is a prophet?

A prophet is someone who speaks on behalf of God.

They generally do two things: They forth-tell God’s Word and sometimes foretell something about the future.

Their main role is to speak God’s Word.

Moses said in:

Jesus, is also known as the Word of God Himself.

PRIEST

First, what is a priest?

A priest is someone who mediates between God and man and, man and God.

Of course, we also know that Jesus is ascended and is our High Priest in Heaven who is interceding on our behalf.

King

First, what is a king?

This one is fairly obvious.

A king is one that reigns over a kingdom, he rules over his domain.

God knew that there would be many who would come and claim to be the Messiah.

But there was to be only one who could fulfil all - some could fulfil some of the prophecies but only one could literally fulfil them all.

Remember that the Jews had studied these Scriptures so that the real Messiah would not need to announce who he was.

It would be obvious!

And so we see in:

They discovered that Jesus was indeed the Messiah, the One who is Prophet, Priest and King.

Not only that but Jesus claimed the title for Himself:

The Samaritans worked it out!

And at the very beginning of His ministry see Philip and Nathaniel:

And Peter finally got it too!

John’s Gospel was written so we would know it:

The Reason for writing: Jesus is the Messiah!

And they could have checked out the other prophecies, say about, His birth:

The most obvious one is

and

Then there are others that speak of where He would be born:

And Jesus’ childhood

But let us come also to the reason He came which was to save us from our sin in the first prophecy of Jesus foretold in

First we should note that her seed means that the one to come would be human and the fact that Genesis states that it is ‘he shall bruise your head’ make this first clue about the one who comes to save: He will be a man born of a woman making him completely human.

Clearly the seed here is of the woman – biologically it is not a woman who normally has the seed but the man.

Clearly this is a virgin birth.

These verses indicate that the Messiah would be a man born of a woman it also established that the Messiah would be born of a virgin.

Then Jesus lived the life and fulfilled many other prophecies but note that on Palm Sunday, what happened?

the common people for they laid their garments laid out – only done for a King – after 3 years of ministry that were saying we are your humble servants.

Now we come to another remarkable prophecy:

30 pieces of silver is the price of an ox or a slave yet we hear the sarcasm of Zechariah in calling it a princely sum but, it is here so that it would be fulfilled literally for it was the price of betrayal for the Prince of Peace:

I’ve given a very potted history of the prophecies of the Old Testament concerning Jesus Christ.

And that was such small portion of what I could have shared with you this evening.

We have no excuse not to trust the Scriptures and what they say and is also one of the best ways to show to unbelievers that God’s Word is reliable and accurate and trustworthy.

No other document could possible contrast with the Bible.

What it says has happened and what is left to happen will happen - to the very letter, as we saw with the princely sum.

You have the tools to tell people this Christmastime that Jesus came in fulfilment of the Bible as Paul says in:

The Scriptures talked of here are passages like Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53.

I do not have time to do into all these today but these were written up to 1000 years before Jesus came, and fulfilled to the letter.

We have glad tidings to tell this time of year.

Let’s make sure we invite all we can to the services and when we are with our families may God’s Word also be in our mouths forth-telling the wonderful things God has done through our Messiah, our Prophet, Priest and King.

I hope our hearts are warmed as the disciples were that day.

Benediction

Bibliography

None