Is He From the Old Testament or the New Testament?

Message Description:

Everyone knows that the Old Testament is about heroes like David and Joshua, and the New Testament is about Jesus. Right? Well, not so fast. Dr. David Jeremiah explains why Jesus isn’t limited to just a portion of God’s Word.

People who do possibility studies, mathematicians have written about what would the odds be of 48 of these prophecies being fulfilled in exact detail.
And the number that they came up with is not possible for me to say I can’t even describe it.
Here’s the take on it. It’s more than the entire atoms on the earth, not people atoms.
In other words, it is absolutely impossible that this could have happened and this could have happened and it not be the miraculous hand of god in the middle of it all.
Jesus Christ is the promised messiah.
There isn’t any question about it, any thinking person, any honest, reasonable person who goes to the study of it The Old Testament men and women is packed with information about Jesus Christ.
There are more than 300 specific predictions about his first coming in the Old Testament scriptures.
There are type or pictures of him in the Old Testament.
Sometimes he shows up in the Old Testament.
It’s called a Theophany, the personal presence of Jesus before he was born in Bethlehem.
When you read the Old Testament with Jesus in mind, everything is different.
Everything is totally revised and you see that these are not just a collection of stories, but these are preparing you to know Jesus who’s about to be introduced in the New Testament.
As he comes to this earth. Is Jesus in the Old Testament or in the New?
He’s in both, but primarily He’s in the Old Testament, and that’s what we may not know about Jesus.
First of all, I want to introduce you to the first presentation of the gospel in the entire Bible.
And if I ask you where that is, you probably would say, oh, it’s probably John 316 or Matthew, no, It’s not there.
It’s not Isaiah. It’s not the Psalms. It’s not the historical books.
But it’s in Genesis chapter 3 and verse 15. Theologians call this verse the protoevangelium.
Proto means first evangelium means gospel. They call Genesis 315, the first gospel.
As you know, the Bible begins with the book of Genesis, and the story of god’s creation, his universe, his planet, and the two people that he put on this earth, Adam and Eve, he created them for fellowship with himself, and you know the story of how they violated his command, and they sinned And, uh, punishment came.
It was a sad day for all of us when the apple was eaten by Adam and Eve.
But here’s what I want you to know.
God never gave up on them when they were thrown out of the garden.
Almighty god had a talk with Satan And in Genesis 3 15, here are the words that god said to Satan, He said, I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed, He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.
Now, that sounds like a code, That sounds like a foreign language like what in the world does that mean?
Some people missed this and missed the blessing of it, take this little phrase, he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heal.
Now, this is a very interesting little study.
So look down in your Bible, and let me ask you this question, is the word he capitalized?
Come on now, is it? Alright.
Look down in the next phrase, and you shall bruise his heel is the word his capitalized.
So who do you suppose that might be? That’s Jesus. So listen, here’s here’s what this means.
God told Satan that one day, a seed of the woman Who is that?
That’s Jesus, born of a woman. One day, a seed of the woman is coming.
And Satan, you will bruise his heel, but don’t get all excited Satan because one day he’s gonna bruise your head.
When Jesus was born and came into this world, he went to the cross, and Satan bruised his heel, Satan thought he had won.
He was dancing on top of the tomb, and he thought that it was over, but he didn’t take Jesus out.
He just bruised his heel. The scripture says one day when Jesus comes the second time, he’s gonna bruise Satan’s head, and the god of peace will crush Satan under your feet shortly, Romans 16 20.
So what god said to Satan was there’s coming someone born of a woman who is going to take you out of the picture and make it impossible for you to control the destiny of my children.
There is coming someone as early as the Garden of Eden, this message was spoken, there is coming someone born of the seed of a woman who will stand between you Satan and humanity.
You will hurt this someone in the heel, but he will crush your head.
And when you come to the new testament with this in the back of your mind, Eregalations chapter 4.
But when the fullness of time had come, god sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law to redeem those who are under the law that we might receive the adoption of sons.
I wish I could spend more time going because this is such a rich, yet sometimes totally misunderstood passage.
Genesys 315 is one of the most encouraging verses in the Bible because here is the first promise of the gospel Here we see Jesus who’s going to come and defeat Satan and bring us back to the family of god.
Genesis 315 is about Jesus. Jesus in the Old Testament.
And then you come to the book of Exodus and you meet another person who is a picture of Jesus.
We call this person the Passover lamb.
God’s plan of redemption continues to unfold And here we have one of the Bible’s greatest types.
In the Old Testament, in the early chapters of Exodus, we have the story of Pharaoh and Moses.
And you remember the contest between Pharaoh and Moses that resulted in many plagues that were leveled against the Egyptians.
But the worst of all the plagues, which was so bad it can even hardly be called a plague, was when the lord god after all of the resistance on the part of pharaoh said, on this particular night, the death angels going to pass through Egypt, and the first born of every one of your families is going to be slain.
But Moses told the Israelite families who lived in Egypt, to take a spotless lamb and brush its blood on the doorposts and lintels of their houses.
Here’s how it reads in Exodus chapter 12, for I will pass through the land of Egypt on that night and will strike all the first born in the land of Egypt both man and beast.
And against all the gods of Egypt, I will execute judgment I and the lord.
Now, the blood shall be assigned for you on the houses where you are.
And when I see the blood, I will pass over you.
The lord was simply revealing through this old testament story, his pattern and his plan.
Our salvation from death requires the sacrifice and blood of an innocent lamb.
And 1400 years later, when John the Baptist introduced the Messiah to the world. This is what he said.
Behold the lamb of god who takes away the sin of the world.
Just as the lamb of god in the Old Testament was that which enabled the death angel to pass over the houses of the Israelites who displayed the blood on their doorposts.
So the blood of the lamb of god who was slain on calvary, when it is applied to our hearts, keeps us from the judgment against us because of our sin and we are redeemed.
In the old testament, he’s the Passover lamb.
In the new testament, he’s the lamb of god who takes away the sin of the world.
Here’s the third one. Jesus, the bronze serpent.
The book of numbers describes one of the most vivid symbols of Christ in the Old Testament.
Moses had, I think, the hardest job anybody has ever had. Because Israel kept getting themselves in trouble.
They’d get in trouble. God would send some punishment to them.
They’d get alright with god, and they’d come back, and they’d walk with god for a while.
Then before you know it, there they go again. It’s just one story after the other.
And don’t look so surprised because it sounds like our story, doesn’t it?
Well, in the book of numbers, in the 21st chapter, Israel’s in a lot of trouble.
They’ve done some very bad things.
Don’t have time to go into all the detail, but god was fed up with it.
And so he sent some punishment to get their attention.
Now ladies, you might wanna close your ears when I say it. He sent them snakes.
The bible calls them serpents, but they’re just snakes.
Mean ugly snakes, snakes everywhere in Israel, and they were poisonous snakes.
And if you got bit by one of these snakes, you just was it. You’re done.
Nothing to do, but die. And Moses plead with god.
Moses felt responsible for the fact that the people were sinning.
He begged god to take this plague from his people.
And god spoke to Moses and told him, make a fiery serpent and set it on a pole.
And it shall be that everyone who is bitten when he looks at it shall live.
And Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on the standard.
And it came about that if a serpent bit anyone in the camp, when he looked to the bronze serpent, he lived.
You say, well, pastor, what does that mean? Why don’t we ask Jesus?
Jesus explained it in John 3, 14, 15, this is what he said.
As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, Even so must the son of man be lifted up?
That whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
The people in the wilderness looked to the serpent, and they were healed.
And when you and I looked to Jesus on the cross, when we feel the regret and pain of what we have done and our sinful choices, the the remedy is never to try to heal ourselves.
The remedy is simply to look to Jesus and accept what he’s done on the cross, to look to the cross and say, I know you’re there for me.
You paid the penalty for my sin.
And when we look to the cross, has the same effect upon us as what happened in the Old Testament when those who have been bitten by the serpent looked to the serpent on the pole, and they were healed.
It’s a perfect illustration of Jesus. And where is it? It’s in numbers chapter 21.
That’s in the Old Testament. That’s Jesus in the Old Testament.
And then number 4, there’s Jesus to forsaken the savior.
In Psalm 22, The psalmist describes the crucifixion.
I want you to just think about this for a moment.
I wish we could open our bibles and go through all the different verses, but let me just give you the gist of it, and you can write it down in your notes.
In Psalm 22, we have a prediction of the words that Jesus would say while he was dying on the cross.
My god, my god, why have you forsaken me? Psalm 22 verse 1.
In Psalm 22, we have a description of the nature of his suffering and death verse 7.
In Psalm 22, we have the exact words that were flung at him by the bystanders at the cross.
In Psalm 22, we have the story of the dehydration and loss of bodily fluids that were involved in his terrible death at crucifixion.
In Psalm 22, we have a history of the disjointed position of his body In Psalm 22, we have a record of his intense thirst.
In Psalm 22, we have a record of the piercing of his hands and feet.
In Psalm 22, we have the unclothe state of his body in death.
In Psalm 22, we have the gambling away of his garments by the executioners.
In Psalm 22, we have his declaration of victory at the resurrection.
And ladies and gentlemen, Psalm 22 was written 1000 years before Jesus died on the cross.
Even more amazing is when Psalm 22 was written, crucifixion was unknown in the world.
Crucifixion didn’t come until 500 years later. Crucifixion is the most cruel kind of execution.
And in the days before the Romans had power, crucifixion was not used.
And when David wrote this 1000 years before it happened on Mount Calvary, There wasn’t even any knowledge of crucifixion and yet David described it literally in a Psalm that was written 10 centuries.
Before it actually happened.
Yes, me, why I believe in Jesus is not because I have this wonderful emotional feeling in my heart.
I’ve done a little work. I realized that this Jesus that I put my faith in is worthy of my trust not just because I’m a man of faith.
I also happen to be a man of evidence, and the evidence for Jesus is so powerful that any thinking person who would religiously study it would have to come away with the realization that this is unlike anything there is in the history of the world.
He’s the seed of the woman. He’s the passover lamb. He’s the fiery serpent. He’s the forsaken savior.
And he’s the suffering servant. Now let’s pass from Psalms to the prophet Isaiah.
The book of Isaiah is replete with the message of Jesus.
The information about his coming.
Let’s just stop for a moment and think about Christmas, if you will.
In the book of Isaiah, the Messiah is to be born of a virgin.
He will be called Emmanuel, which means god with us. He will come from Galilee.
He will be born a child, a son, He will be the prince of peace who will inherit the throne of his father, David.
He will be anointed by the Holy Spirit.
He will possess remarkable traits of carry and personality and do something so extraordinary on a mountain that the shroud of death covering all nations will be destroyed.
Isaiah wrote all about his birth 700 years before he was born.
And when you come to the 53rd chapter of Isaiah, you have the story again of his crucifixion.
You know these words, let me read them, but he was wounded for our transgressions.
He was bruised for our inequities. The chastisement of our peace was upon him.
And by his stripes, we are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray, and we have turned everyone to his own way.
And the lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
Isaiah wrote those words as if he were standing at the end of history, and it had already happened.
All these words are in the past tense. He’s not saying here, he will do this.
He’s saying he has done this.
Isaiah stood in his prophetic role at the end of history and said before it ever happened, this is what’s gonna happen to the lord Jesus Christ.
The entire 53rd chapter of Isaiah contains a picture of Jesus Christ so vivid and so detailed that it’s difficult to see that it was written 7 centuries before Jesus Christ was born in Bethlehem.
Many scholars have said I’ve Isaiah 53 is the most important chapter in the Old Testament because here we have the prophet telling us about the savior, we have his prophecy 700 years before Then we have the record of what happened, which has been attested to by secular historians.
If a man 700 years before he was born, had this prophesied about him, and everything was perfectly fulfilled I don’t mean almost, or he just almost did this, every one of these prophecies were fulfilled to the exact degree.
People who do possibility studies, mathematicians, have written about what would the odds be of 48 of these prophecies being fulfilled in exact detail?
And the number that they came up with is not possible for me to say, I can’t even describe it.
Here’s the take on it. It’s more than the entire atoms on the earth, not people atoms.
In other words, it is absolutely impossible that this could have happened and this could have happened and it not be the miraculous hand of god in the middle of it all.
Jesus Christ is the promised messiah.
There isn’t any question about it, any thinking person, any honest, reasonable person who goes to the study of it who put that all together in Isaiah and in the New Testament was none other than the god you and I worship and his son is Jesus Christ.
So when we look at these things from the Old Testament, what do we learn?
How do we process this in our own daily lives?
First of all, when you do this, this little routine, this little study that we’ve done today, what happens is You strengthen your faith.
You know, I’m getting so tired of people saying, Oh, you Christians, you believe anything.
Somebody tells you to believe it and you believe it. No. I don’t believe anything.
I believe what the Bible says, and I’ve done some homework to find out Now what the Bible says is not just true because it says it’s true.
It’s true because it’s been proven to be true. The Bible tells you the truth.
And this Jesus, who is the miracle out of this process, is the Jesus who says to you and me, I am the way the truth and the life, and no man comes to the father except through me.
We may not like that. We may think that’s pretty exclusive, but it’s true.
If Jesus could do what he did, in the old and the new.
He proves who he is, and that gives me such great comfort.
When I have a doubt, when I have a concern about my faith as we all do on occasion.
One of the best things you can do is go back and read Psalm 22.
And when you get done with that, go read Isaiah 53 and realize That was written 1000 years 700 years before it ever happened in the new testament.
So knowing Jesus from the Old Testament reassures our faith. And it revives our hearts.
Do you remember, um, one of the 2 disciples went on this walk on the road to Amaz.
It was after Jesus died on the cross, and these two guys were going from Jerusalem to Amaz, And on the way, they were talking with each other by how disappointed they were because they thought Jesus was gonna be their king.
And all of a sudden, somebody started walking along with him. This is one of my stories in their testament.
And they didn’t know who it was.
Well, the the Bible actually says that Jesus caught up with them, and he got in step with them.
So now they’re having conversation, Jesus walking along with them, they’re talking about how they had hoped that Jesus was going to be the one who would relieve them from their bondage.
The one they were talking about was walking along with them, and they didn’t know it.
And finally, they get to the turnoff to go to their house, and they go to their house, and the Bible says, that when they were breaking the bread, in the breaking of the bread, they realized who it was, who had been with them, and then he departed from them.
And Luke 2432 says this about the conversation they had about Jesus.
And they said to one another, did not our hearts burn within us while he talked with us on the road and while he opened the scriptures to us.
Those 2 disciples knew something was going on. Jesus opened the scriptures to them. And what did he do?
He opened the old testament scriptures.
And the Bible says that he taught them from the Old Testament scriptures concerning himself And the result of it was it revived their hearts and they were filled with joy and excitement.
That’s what happens when you realize that he’s the Jesus of the old and the Jesus of the new.
Knowing Jesus from the Old Testament will restore your hope.
Romans 15 forces this, for whatever things were written in the old testament, were written for our learning that we might have hope.
We have hope. It’s not a hope, so hope. It’s a no so hope. We know.
That Jesus is who he claims to be.
If you have never taken the step to believe in Jesus Christ as your lord and savior, you can do that today.
If you will allow us, doctor Jeremiah would like to send you 2 resources that will help you.
The first is a booklet called your greatest turning point, which will help you as you begin your relationship with Christ.
And the second is our monthly devotional magazine turning points. To give you encouragement and inspiration throughout the year.
These resources are yours completely free when you contact Turning Point today.
Next time, on turning point.
Jesus came to be the way.
He has commissioned us as his people to go into all the world and proclaim to them that he is the way.
If they will come through him, they can go to heaven, and they can be with god forever
Thank you for being with us today. Join Doctor Jeremiah next time for his message.
Is he the son of Mary or the son of god.
Here on Turning Point.