Jesus, the Message of the Prophets

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Turn with me in your Bibles to John chapter 1. John chapter 1. We began a series last Sunday and continue with it this Sunday and into next Sunday about the first coming of Christ according to the gospel of John because John gives a little bit different take on it than Matthew and Luke do.

And the reason for that, as I explained last week, is all too often at Christmas time, all people hear is about the manger. And to be sure, the manger is an incredible story. And to say incredible, I don’t mean unbelievable.

I mean, it’s amazing, but I believe true. But when people seem to be more receptive to spiritual things, they seem to be more receptive to the message of Christ, to anything about Christ at Christmas time. That’s why people come to church at Christmas time.

We do them a disservice when we come in and reinforce the idea that Jesus is just the baby in the manger. He’s not a Savior who died for sins. He’s not the unique Son of God.

He’s a baby in the manger. And I shared with you, you know, we tend to freeze people in those roles that are comfortable. We don’t want our kids to grow up.

We don’t want people to move away. When things are good, we like them to stay the same as they’ve been. I shared with you last week how I was sad when Benjamin, my son, got teeth because I said I’d missed the toothless grin, and I shouldn’t have said that because at the senior saints thing on Tuesday as we were passing out baskets, I heard some of you laughing.

I said, what are y’all laughing at? They said, we were going to take our teeth out so you could experience the toothless grin again. I’ve got Madeline for that, thank goodness.

Everybody keep your teeth in. There’s part of me that said, I don’t want my son to grow up. Things are good how they are.

Now, some of y’all saw him misbehaving at the mission rally Friday night. Yes, he’s starting in on terrible twos, but I can still pick him up and take him out when I need to. So things are still good.

Part of me doesn’t want him to grow up, but at the same time it would be sad if he stayed a baby forever or if I expected him to stay a baby forever. That’s really not what I want. And we give people the idea in churches.

When they come and they hear what we’ve got to say about Jesus, we give them the idea that he is still the baby in the manger, that he was just the baby in the manger. And that’s why we’re taking a look this Christmas season at John’s gospel because he doesn’t go into the explanation, as Matthew and Luke do, of how Jesus came. He goes into an explanation of why.

And if we have the how nailed down, we understand how he came, we understand the virgin birth, the manger, all of those wonderful things. If we understand that, but we miss why he came, then we miss the true importance of what this time of year represents. We’re going to read through the whole passage again, even though we’re just going to look at a couple verses this morning.

Starting in John 1, verse 1, it says, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made.

In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not. There was a man sent from God whose name was John.

The same came for a witness to bear witness of the light that all men through Him might believe. He was not that light, but was sent to bear witness of that light. That was the true light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.

He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. He came unto his own, and his own received him not. But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name.

Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor the will of man, but of God. And the word was made flesh, and dwelt among us. And we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

And John bare witness of Him, and cried, saying, This was He of whom I spake. He that cometh after me is preferred before me, for He was before me. And of His fullness have we all received, and grace for grace.

For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. No man hath seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him. Last Sunday morning, we talked about Jesus, the creator of all, from the first three verses here.

Talked about how He created everything and all the things that He has in common with His Father. That Jesus Christ is, in fact, God, as God the Father is God. That He shares His divine nature.

He shares His eternality. He’s existed from before there was time and will exist beyond when time stops. And that He shares the power and authority of God the Father, because He is God.

as it says in John 1. 1. The word that, when it says word, again, that refers to Jesus Christ. Because He was in the beginning with God, He was with God and was God, it says.

We talked last Sunday night about Jesus, the light of men. That Jesus came not just to be born, not just to give us a lovely story to tell in December, but He came to provide us with those things that mankind is most in need of. We are, when it comes to spiritual things, as brilliant as we think we are, We’re essentially dead men stumbling around in the dark.

No hope of finding our way to God on our own. No hope of making contact with God. No hope of being reconciled to God because of our sins.

And Jesus came to bring light and life to men. So we’ve talked about Jesus, the creator of all. We’ve talked about Jesus, the light of men.

Now we move on in the passage to verse 6, and we talk about Jesus, the message of the prophets. Some of these things may sound a little familiar to you. You may remember, I’m sure you remember that we did a series last fall, fall of 2011, on the prophecies of His first coming, the Old Testament prophecies.

I don’t expect that you remember everything I taught. It was like 12 messages. So some of this may sound familiar to you, but it bears repeating because it’s so important.

But when it talks about the Word coming and when it talks about John bearing witness, it’s referring to Jesus Christ. It says in verse 6, there was a man sent from God whose name was John. Wait a minute, we’re not talking about Christ’s first coming anymore. Now we’re talking about John.

But John only is important insofar as he came to declare Christ. And that’s not to run him down. The Bible talks about him being the greatest of all the prophets. But you know what?

I’m important only insofar as I declare Christ. In the eternal scheme of things, I’m nobody. In the eternal scheme of things, hate to break it to you, but we’re all nobody. So when it talks about John, it talks about John because John talked about Jesus.

There was a man sent from God whose name was John. The same came for a witness to bear witness of the light that all men through him might believe. He was not that light, but was sent to bear witness of that light.

And the importance of this part of the passage is that for the people who read it, the intended audience back 2,000 years ago, they would have read what John wrote, and especially for the Jewish readers, they would have immediately recognized that he’s referring here to prophecy. And we can look back, we have the benefit of being able to look back over all the scriptures and see that they all point to Jesus Christ. Now, don’t make the mistake of thinking I’m saying the Old Testament is an allegory, that it’s just made-up stories that are there to paint a picture of Christ, but they didn’t really happen. Folks, I believe the literal Genesis account of creation.

I believe in the flood. I believe in all the things. I believe that what the Old Testament said happened actually happened, but I believe God is so incredibly powerful and so incredibly smart, those words don’t even begin to cover it, that he orchestrated human history in such a way that these true events happened to point to what was to come.

And we see, first of all this morning, that the prophets were sent by God to speak for God. John is called, John the Baptist, by the way. I don’t think I’ve identified which John I’m talking about yet.

John the Baptist, this man sent from God, is called the greatest of the prophets. He was identified as a prophet. And it says that this man, this John, was sent by God.

John the Baptist did not just show up in Judea and say, hey, I’m here to tell you about Jesus Christ. And it was all his own idea. John the Baptist had that calling on his life from the time he was conceived. If you doubt me on that, go back and read Luke’s gospel.

See, all of these tie in together. Go back and read Luke chapter 1 and chapter 2, and it talks about God setting John apart for the very special purpose of being what Isaiah prophesied, the one crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord. The one who would come and ready the people.

And that he did. He came and preached, and he preached repentance and reminded God’s people that, hey, you have sinned against God, and all these rules that you’re trying to follow, you’re missing the point. Those rules aren’t there for you to follow and show how good you are.

Those rules are there to show you how sinful you are and in need of God’s forgiveness. And he preached repentance, and he baptized those who were willing to listen, and he told them about Christ who was to come. And that was John’s job.

The prophets have always pointed to Jesus Christ. It’s a unique thing in all of human history, this book, that all of it was written. And yes, the things really happened. The details are in there.

But overall, this book, you’d be hard to find a few pages in a row where something doesn’t point to Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ has always been at the center of God the Father’s program. And when He would talk about redeeming Israel, when He would talk about forgiving them, when He would talk about sending a deliverer, He was always talking about Jesus Christ. And when you begin to realize this and begin to look for it, the entire Old Testament points to Him. It’s no surprise that God would send His prophets to talk about Jesus Christ when God sent His prophets to talk about so many things that He was doing.

A verse I found a couple of years ago in the book of Amos, Amos 3. 7 says, Surely the Lord God will do nothing, but He revealeth His secret unto His servants the prophets. And Amos was telling the people, if God is moving, if God is working among His people, He’s going to tell His prophets about it so they can tell the people.

We shouldn’t take from that, oh, God doesn’t do anything ever. That’s not what He’s saying. When God’s at work among His people, He tells His prophets because He wants His people to know.

And so it would make sense that if God was going to tell them, hey, such and such city was going to be destroyed. Hey, I’m going to bring you back into your land. It’s going to look like this.

The borders. . .

If He was going to tell them all of these relatively minor details, it stands to reason that the Bible would be full of references to the single most important point, the single most important thing that God has ever done, and that’s sending His Son to be the Redeemer of those who would believe in Him. The single most important thing in God’s program ever was to send Jesus Christ. So it stands to reason that if he’s going to tell through the prophets the small things, that somewhere that would be pointed out. And you probably know already that it is pointed out.

The whole Old Testament talks about Jesus Christ. These prophets were sent from God to speak for God. It was not John’s idea to come and talk about Christ any more than it was Moses’ idea to go and tell the people what God said. If you recall the story, Moses argued with God and said, I can’t speak.

I can’t speak to the people. God sent him anyway. It was not Moses’ idea.

I don’t think it was Noah’s idea to build the ark and to go and preach that the flood was coming and people needed to repent. I don’t think it was Jeremiah’s idea to go and declare the word of God and get thrown in prison and get thrown in the stocks and get thrown in a well. When the prophets spoke, it was because God sent them.

We need to understand this and what does it have to do with Christ? We’ll get into that in just a second. The prophets spoke because God sent them and they didn’t speak on their own behalf.

They spoke for God. The Bible says there was a man sent from God whose name was John. The same came for a witness to bear witness of the light.

Now we see when he came sent from God to speak for God, what was it he was here to tell us? It was the same came for a witness to bear witness of the light that all men through him might believe. Ladies and gentlemen, the prophets weren’t just sent to tickle our intellectual curiosity, to give the people some idea, oh, this is what the future holds.

As people think today that prophecy means foretelling the future, prophecy means foretelling the Word of God. And yes, that included some things about the future as well. But prophecy is not, oh, predict the future.

We’re not talking psychic things here. The job of the prophets was to point people to Jesus Christ. That’s why this is so important. It shows that He, unlike any other person who’s ever been born, was unique.

Babies are born every day. I mean, I’ve been there for ours being born. It was special, but it wasn’t exactly miraculous in the sense that Christ’s birth was.

We knew they were coming, knew when they were coming, knew what they were going to be. You know, there wasn’t a whole lot of mystery to it. But the idea that a virgin would conceive and bear this child and that he would be born in Bethlehem when that was many miles from where they lived and that all these things would happen, all of the prophecies, and we’ll talk about a few of them in a minute, but all these things would happen.

Folks, it was miraculous. And the fact that he was pointed to by the prophets was a sign sent from God to show that, hey, the person I’ve been talking about, all these promises that I’ve made to you, this is the fulfillment of those so that there would be no mistake. There was a program on a couple weeks ago that I watched on Nostradamus.

I’ve always been fascinated by Nostradamus. Not that I believe his prophecies. I believe in him as a good guesser and a vague man who wrote things that could apply to anything.

But I’ve never had any scientific evidence to back that up, that he was just a good guesser. But this program I saw was unlike the others that I’d watched on him before, that they did some studies. I can’t remember the university.

They did a study where they took one of his prophecies that everybody looked at after the fact and said, hey, this talks about 9-11. Right there, can’t you see it? He’s talking about 9-11.

He foretold it. And they took it, and they showed people videos and news reports of 9-11. They had one group with videos about 9-11 and a questionnaire.

Does this fit with 9-11? And there were several questions on it. Okay, was he talking about this?

Does this apply? And almost everybody who watched it said, hey, he was talking about 9-11. Pretty compelling until you get to the other group that 9-11 hasn’t been mentioned to them at all in regard to Nostradamus.

And they talk about the London Blitz back in, what was it, 1940, 1941, somewhere in there, where the Nazis bombed London on a nightly basis, brought the city to ruins. And they put this prophecy in front of them. They had it written out.

And they showed them video news reports and things like that of the London Blitz. And they asked them the same questions. Does this apply?

Does this talk about this? And almost everybody said, hey, he’s talking about the London Blitz. he predicted that the Nazis were going to bomb the daylights out of London.

And the point they were trying to make is, hey, these aren’t really prophecies. These are vague sounding things that apply to any number of situations that you look at after the fact and say, hey, that’s what he was talking about. And if you’re in mind for that sort of thing, it works really well.

There are other things where people have gone back after the fact and said, hey, he was talking about Hitler. Hey, he was talking about Napoleon. Hey, he talked about Bush and bin Laden.

and they can point backwards and say, hey, he meant all of these things. Ladies and gentlemen, the prophecy of the Bible is different than any prophecy, supposed prophecy that man comes up with because the people looked at Jesus Christ when he was there and recognized him as the fulfillment of prophecy. When he was, what, eight days old and taken to the temple, there were devout people there who’d been looking for the Messiah all their lives and recognized him for who he was and said, now I can die happy because I’ve seen God’s salvation.

The prophecies of the Bible weren’t things that we look at later on and say, hey, that could be talking about Christ. That could be talking about Christ. They were things that when Christ was born, the people who were paying attention immediately recognized, hey, this is who God is talking about and has been talking about all this time. The prophecies of the Bible pointed to Jesus Christ. He was the message of the prophets. He is the reason for the existence of the Old Testament to point us to Him as God’s ultimate gift.

As I’ve told you, for as long as God’s been speaking, there’s been a pattern of Him speaking about Jesus Christ. And I’ve shared with you bits and pieces of things I’ve found. And if you think, okay, he’s making up new things, he’s finding new doctrines. No, because I’ve gone and researched the things I found and other people have found them too.

I don’t think I’m, you know, if other solid people see it that way and you’re glorifying Jesus Christ, you can’t be too far off. But you go back to the earliest pages of the Old Testament and you begin to see prophecies and you begin to see types or pictures of Christ. In Genesis 3. 15 it says, And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, God speaking to Satan, the serpent, and between thy seed and her seed, and it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.

He was talking about Jesus and his defeat of Satan and the fact that Jesus would be injured in the process. Genesis 3. 21, later the same chapter, Unto Adam also and to his wife did the Lord God make coats of skins and clothe them.

If you’re thinking, what is he talking about? What does that have to do with Jesus Christ? That established in the minds of God’s people the principle that the innocent would die for the guilty, to cover the sins of the guilty.

And I’ll admit, early on in Genesis, you know, they’re sort of vague, but as you got closer and closer to time, God revealed more and more detail. And some of these with just the pictures, the types of Christ, I only looked through Genesis and Exodus because I ran out of time. I was fine in two minutes.

The ark. You ever think about the ark being a picture of Jesus Christ? Think about the fact that God’s wrath was poured out on sin.

He destroyed everyone except to those who by faith ran to the ark for safety, trusted in God, and God used that as a vessel to deliver them from the waters of wrath. Ladies and gentlemen, that points, I believe, clearly to Jesus Christ. I think it even talks about that in 1 or 2 Peter, the ark sparing them from the wrath. And ladies and gentlemen, if there’s any vessel today into which we can go by faith and be spared from the wrath of God on sin, it’s into Jesus Christ. We run to Him for refuge.

Genesis 22, 13, and Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked and beheld behind him a ram caught in a thicket by his horns, and Abraham went and took the ram and offered him up for a burnt offering in the stead of his son. That’s when God had commanded him to sacrifice Isaac and Abraham, trembling, I’m sure, wanting to see his son live, I can’t even imagine, goes and draws back the knife and suddenly is stopped by God, and they see a ram caught in a thicket. And folks, a ram is a strong animal. For him to be caught in the thicket, that tells me God was involved somehow.

He could have ripped himself out of there, I’m sure. But that ram, I believe, is a picture of Christ, pointing to the God, God doesn’t require us to make the sacrifices for sin. God would ultimately provide the sacrifice to make atonement for our sins, to pay for our sins.

God promised that all nations of the earth would be blessed out of Abraham’s lineage. I believe that’s a reference to Christ. Because what is it that’s come out of the Jewish nation that has been a blessing to every nation of the world other than Jesus Christ? Joseph in the book of Genesis.

And God sent me before you to preserve a posterity in the earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance. Think about it. His brothers beat him.

His brothers wanted to kill him. His brothers sold him into slavery. His brothers did to him every, just about every rotten, dirty trick you could imagine.

They did it to Joseph, and he was sent off into slavery in Egypt, and yet God used his suffering to provide a way of escape from the famine to save many people alive, as the Bible puts it. And Joseph, Joseph for us and for them was a picture of the one who suffered to save his brethren. Then they’re told in the book of Exodus to take the blood of a lamb without blemish and to put it over their doorposts when the angel of death passed over and God was about to deliver his people from Egypt in slavery.

They said, kill a lamb and put the blood over the doorposts, and when I see the blood, I’ll pass over the house. I love that song, when I see the blood, I will pass, I will pass over you. Ladies and gentlemen, he is the lamb who was slain, and his blood is our covering from the wrath of God.

He’s the smitten rock that issues the water of life When Moses was told in the desert where the people were dying of thirst to smite the rock and the water would pour forth. Folks, the Bible calls Jesus Christ the rock. And the Bible talks about Him overflowing with living water.

I believe that was intended by God to be a picture to them that one day the rock would be smitten to provide them with the living water. He’s the Sabbath rest from our labors. The book of Hebrews bears this one out, that when God talks about resting on the Sabbath day, that that was supposed to be a picture that for centuries, for millennia, We would labor to try to be good enough for God, and yet by Christ and His righteousness, we’re able to enter into this Sabbath rest where we are able to rest in Him and His righteousness and rest from our labors.

And that’s just through Genesis and Exodus, and I can’t guarantee you that I found every place where it points to pictures. You say, there’s nothing in there that points unmistakably to Him. You go through the entire thing, and you find all of these.

You find all the places where it talks about sacrifice, perfect sacrifice, where it talks about God providing the sacrifice for sin, where it talks about the places where people find refuge from the wrath of God. When it talks about all these places and you begin to look at all of these, and there’s an unmistakable pattern throughout the entire Old Testament, that God was getting pictures into the minds of people so that they would be prepared for what was to come. They would know what was to happen.

He gave also some specific prophecies. Isaiah 7. 14 talks about the virgin birth about 700 years before it happened.

Micah talks about the Messiah being born in Bethlehem. Zechariah talks about his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, even talks about the donkey that he would ride in on. Zechariah also talks about how he would be betrayed for 30 pieces of silver.

David, in the book of Psalms, talks about his crucifixion. A thousand years before crucifixion was a method of execution that was used. That’s Psalm 22, 15 through 18, by the way.

Isaiah talks again in chapter 53 about the fact that he would be killed, He would suffer, He would bleed, He would die to pay the penalty for our sins. Isaiah 53 points to Christ in an unmistakable way. Out of all of the passages of the Old Testament, it’s probably the most clear that you read Isaiah 53 and I don’t see how anybody can conclude that it talks about anyone other than Jesus Christ. Ladies and gentlemen, the point of the Old Testament, everybody looks at the Bible in the world around us.

Everybody looks at the Bible as a book of rules. These are the do’s, these are the don’ts. You stay within these boundaries or God will get you.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Bible is not about rules. There are rules, there are principles that we ought to live our lives by out of gratitude and in order to try to please God, but the Bible is not a book of rules. The Bible is a book, a collection of 66 books pointing unmistakably to the person of Jesus Christ. You hear people talk about, I don’t believe the Bible, it’s a book of rules or it’s a book of fairy tales.

No, it’s not. It’s a book about Jesus Christ. It points unmistakably to Him. What does that have to do with John?

Because God sent these prophets so that his people would know when he sent Jesus Christ, this is the one I’ve been talking about. You know, if Nostradamus really did predict Hitler, it would be nice if the people had, you know, in 1920s when he started coming to power, if they’d said, wait, this is the guy he’s talking about. You don’t want to go down this road.

Where were the Nostradamusites in 1933 when Hitler was elected chancellor of Germany? Nobody was there saying this is the guy. Shortly after that, some of the Nazis said, hey, he’s talking about Hitler.

This is good for us. But nobody was there beforehand saying, wait a minute, this is not good. And yet when Jesus was born, people recognized this is the Messiah of God.

This is the one who’s going to come and make payment for our sins. Ladies and gentlemen, he was no ordinary baby. Yes, he was born in the manger.

Yes, he was born like any of us, other than the virgin birth and being laid in the manger. But just being born as a human, he was born like any one of us. But we do the world a disservice if that’s all they see, is some baby born in a manger.

Folks, the world needs to know that when God promised a Messiah, when God promised a Savior, this entire book points to the fact that that baby in the manger was to be the Savior. And that when He was born, it was to be more than that. That He was to one day get out of that manger.

He was to walk and to grow and to learn and to become strong and to become a man. And He was to live a perfect sinless life, walking among us, being tempted and tried in every single way that we are and yet without sin. And that He was to go to the cross for us.

See, the prophets were not only sent to tell of Jesus Christ and not just to satisfy anyone’s intellectual curiosity, but this morning in closing, they were sent, as it says, including John, that all men through him might believe. See, the hope here, why God did all this, was not just to point us to Jesus so we’d see who he is and say, that’s great, he’s a nice man, he’s a good moral teacher, but for us to believe in him, who he was, who he said he was and what he said he came to do, that all men through him might believe. God so loved the world that He sent His only begotten Son that whosoever believes on Him would not perish but have everlasting life.

God sent His Son to be the perfect sacrifice and to die for us, and it was so important to God that we believed that, that He sent the prophets to make sure we could not miss who He was. Now, some people out of hardness of heart or just desiring not to know, as we’ll talk about tonight, they missed Him. But it was God’s every intention that we see Him for who He really was.

This morning, we need to see Him for who He really is. The whole purpose of the Bible is that we believe on Jesus Christ.