Jesus, the Message of the Prophets

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I was thinking back to my time in school, and one class that I did not enjoy was English. I didn’t mind the grammar part, but the literature part just got on my nerves. And some of you were probably in the same boat.

I absolutely despised it when we would get these assignments and these papers that say, you’re going to read this book, you’re going to read this poem, whatever it is, And then you have to interpret it. And you have to look for the main idea. Now, that can be a useful skill.

I don’t mind that so much. What I minded was that so much of the curriculum was rooted in post-modernism, which is just a fancy way of saying anything can mean anything. So nothing means anything.

And it was all so subjective. It was all about what the teacher thought or the writer of the curriculum thought. I remember, I don’t remember all the details, but I just remember it very, it’s funny how foggy things get as you get further away from them, right?

I remember some of this, going through this poem, going through this work of literature and having to come up with an interpretation and explain the main idea, and I always did so bad at it in class. And my teacher said, well, it’s a critique of colonialism. And it’s this, and he’s talking about the Industrial Revolution.

I don’t know. I remember looking at it going, it’s a poem about birds. Where do you get any of that?

I’m lost. Am I even in the right class at this point? And that was in high school, and it only got worse when I got to college. I took an art history class.

And I thought, this will be easy. I enjoy art. charla and I can spend hours in an art museum I enjoy art I let me clarify by art I mean things that look like other things right I I enjoy art I don’t necessarily enjoy standing around looking at a painting of a dot and saying well I think what the uh what the artist meant here would no so I had trouble in that class because that’s what we were expected to do I I was we were getting to the end of the semester and I was staring down the barrel of a C and I did not get C’s.

And so what am I supposed to do here? Well, I talked to the professor and she said, well, you can do an extra credit project. I want you to go over to the library at OU, find a painting there, and I want you to write a 15 page paper on it, interpreting the painting.

Okay. So I went and found a painting and I sat there and I stared at it for a while and took notes on everything I saw in the painting. And I went back and I started typing up a paper and I just made stuff up.

Well, the mirror represents, it’s calling us to look and examine ourselves in our own society. I don’t know what they meant by putting that mirror. I’m guessing they were painting a picture of a room that had a mirror behind the lady that I don’t know, but I just made stuff up.

And I made enough credit on that to pull my grade in the class up to an A. I thought, this really is just random. There is no..

. This is. .

. I thought, am I being played here because this can’t be how it works. Now, it’s dangerous.

It can be dangerous when we get into territory where we can interpret the main idea of the story however we want to because nothing means anything. People try to do that from time to time with literature. They try to do that with God’s Word, which is why I typically try to go back and say, here’s what the language meant.

Here’s what was going on in the historical context. This is how they would have understood it. Here’s how it applies to our time.

Try to root it in what they would have understood. God wanted us to understand very clearly what the main idea behind all of Scripture was. And that’s what He addresses in John 1.

Now, we can find the main idea behind individual pieces of Scripture. And by the way, it is not just whatever we want it to mean. We go through and talk about those things I just mentioned, the historical context, the language.

And we can find that for individual pieces of Scripture. But in the passage we’re going to look at in John 1 this morning, it points us to the main idea behind all of Scripture as a whole. That’s what we’re going to look at.

As we continue this study of John 1 and how John wrote about the coming of Jesus, he didn’t write about the events in Bethlehem. He didn’t spell those out like Matthew and Luke did. But John explains to us in John chapter 1 why the events in Bethlehem were so important.

And just to give you a spoiler alert and jump ahead to the main idea of the message, John tells us that Jesus is the main idea behind all of Scripture, behind everything that God had revealed up to this point. So hopefully you’re with me in John chapter 1 by now. If you’re using a device, there’s a link in your bulletin.

If you haven’t, turn there. turn with me or it’ll be on your screen. And once you find it in front of you, if you would stand with me as we read from God’s Word, if you’re able to stand for a few seconds without too much difficulty.

We’re going to look at John 1, verses 6 through 8 this morning. It says, There was a man sent from God whose name was John. This man came for a witness, to bear witness of the light that all through him might believe.

He was not that light, but was sent to bear witness of that light. And just to give you a little added context, verse 9 says, that was the true light which gives light to every man coming into the world. And you may be seated.

We’ll get to verse 9 next time. But I want us to look at verses 6 through 8. You’ll notice it does not say the name Jesus in there anywhere.

But it’s talking about Jesus because it’s talking about the light and John coming to be a witness of the light. If you look back earlier in John, what we’ve looked at the last couple of weeks, The light he’s talking about is the spiritual light that Jesus Christ brings because he identifies the Word as the bringer of light. You go back to the first three verses, the Word can be nobody other than Jesus Christ. So what he’s saying here is that John came to bear witness of the light.

John came to prepare people for the message of salvation that Jesus Christ was going to bring. After Jesus came to earth, after Jesus was born at Bethlehem, after all the events transpired that we’re walking through in the live nativity and that we hear over and over at Christmas time, after all of those events transpired, the next thing on God’s to-do list was to make sure that word got out. As a matter of fact, while that was still going on, God wanted to make sure word got out.

A big part of what we do in the live nativity scenes is the angels go and tell the shepherds. Immediately, the news was supposed to be broadcast. And then through the star, God broadcasts the news to the wise men. God wanted people to know what He had done.

And eventually, He sends John. It says in verse 6, there was a man sent from God whose name was John. Now, the writer was not talking about himself.

I know we’re in the book of John. That can be a little confusing. The writer here is not talking about himself.

When John the Apostle, who wrote the book of John, talks about himself in his writing, he never uses his own name. He always refers to himself as the disciple whom Jesus loved, which in some cases is a very humble way to approach it. That, hey, my identity is not about who John is.

It’s all wrapped up in Jesus. And yet sometimes I think it’s not entirely humble because he says, hey, I’m the one Jesus loved. He makes sure to get that in there.

He’s not talking about himself. He’s talking about John the Baptist. John the Baptist was the first cousin of Jesus. And he says here, there was a man sent from God name was John.

Now I’ve told you in verses 1, 2, and 3 where we see that word was, the verb tense tells us that it’s an ongoing thing. He just always was. You know, I told you one week about the video camera versus the picture camera, and those are the video camera, it’s an ongoing thing.

Here we come back to the version of the word was that’s more like the picture camera. Jesus always was, and then suddenly John was. So right off the bat, we see that John and Jesus are not cut from the same cloth.

They’re not the same. John was not God Himself. He was nothing special as far as His nature.

He was a man just like you and me. What was special about Him was the calling that God had placed on His life to come and be somebody who shared the message of Jesus. That was what marked Him out and made Him special. And this word sent.

There was a man sent from God. We could easily. .

. Just glance over that and miss the meaning of it. You know, I send my kids to run errands all the time.

Charlotte was so excited to have a two-story house when we moved here, and then we realized, wait, that means a lot of stairs. And so I’m glad we have all these children, so I can sent them up the stairs sometimes when I don’t want to. We send people on errands all the time.

The word sent here is the same word that we get the word apostle from. So when it says he was sent, it’s not just a run-of-the-mill sending. He is sending him out on a mission.

God sent John the Baptist with a specific mission, and that was to bear witness of the light. Verse 7 tells us what that assignment is. This man came for a witness to bear witness of the light that all through him might believe.

He came specifically to tell people about Jesus. As a matter of fact, his very existence is not explainable in purely human terms. If you’re familiar with the story at all, we are told that Elizabeth, Mary’s cousin, is barren. She is unable to conceive.

She’s significantly older than Mary, as a matter of fact. She and her husband have given up, basically, on being able to have children until she’s told that she’ll bear a son. It shocks everyone.

Her husband questions God’s ability to do that in a sense, and so is unable to speak for a while. The whole thing just doesn’t make sense. But God allowed them to conceive that child for a purpose because God had a purpose in mind for John the Baptist before he was ever even conceived.

By the way, different calling, but the Scriptures teach that God has a purpose in mind for each of us before we’re even conceived. John’s entire reason for existing was to tell people about Jesus. It was to come, and as verse 7 says, bear witness of the light.

For him to bear witness of the light, as he’s talking about the spiritual life that Jesus brings to those of us who are dead in our sins and separated from God, it means he is coming to preach the message of salvation in Jesus Christ. And it says in verse 7 that all through him might believe. He was also announcing the good news of salvation to people from every group and every background. Because up to this point, people thought the salvation that God was sending was available to the Jews only.

But it says here that all through Him might believe. Now we know from Scripture and from experience that doesn’t mean that every person is going to believe, unfortunately. As much as God is willing that none should perish but that all should come to repentance.

We know Jesus also said there would be a lot of people who would find their way down the broad way to destruction. So what he’s announcing here is the good news of God’s salvation in Jesus Christ, not just to the Jews, but to the Gentiles, to the entire world, people of every conceivable background, wherever they are, that God is able to save them and is willing to save them and has made provision to save them in Jesus Christ. And it was God’s plan all along that He was going to send John with this message to prepare people for the coming of the Messiah. God did not just wake up.

I know God doesn’t sleep. It’s just an expression. But God did not just wake up some 30, 35 years before the crucifixion and say, I think I’ll make Elizabeth have a baby and then we can use that guy to go and spread the message.

All along, this was part of God’s plan. He was even telling His people that He was going to send this messenger that John the Apostle writes about here, that He was going to send this messenger to prepare the people for the coming of the Messiah. Isaiah chapter 40, this was written 700 years before the fact.

Isaiah chapter 40 talks about the voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be exalted and every mountain and hill brought low. the crooked places shall be made straight and the rough places smooth the glory of the lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together for the mouth of the lord has spoken you may look at that and say well what’s the big deal that’s a but that’s exactly what john the baptist said he was coming to be he showed up on the scene and said yeah that verse from isaiah that’s talking about me I’ve come to prepare the way for the messiah and just so we can’t write it off as a one-off.

Okay, that’s a coincidence. 400 years before the fact, the prophet Malachi wrote about the same person. And in Malachi chapter 4, it says, Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet.

Now, we’re not talking about the literal Elijah, but somebody coming in the spirit of Elijah, somebody with a ministry similar to Elijah to call the people back to repentance. Send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord, and he will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the hearts of the children to fathers, lest I come and strike the earth with a curse. And many theologians identify John the Baptist as at least the partial fulfillment of that promise that he would send Elijah the prophet.

And what we see here, John coming with this calling, this mission, almost like an apostle, and coming as the Lord calls him a prophet, and coming to tell others about Jesus, and coming as Isaiah says to be that voice crying in the wilderness, what we see is that John is simply the latest in a long line of prophets who spoke on God’s behalf. And Jesus was ultimately the message they carried. Now the prophets, the Old Testament prophets in Israel, their message had an immediate fulfillment in many cases.

You know, you read through Isaiah, he’s talking about the Babylonians. You read Jeremiah, he’s talking about the Babylonians. You read Obadiah, he’s talking about the Edomites.

They’re all talking about something that God is going to do in the near future. But within these prophecies, there are glimpses of the Messiah that are not just taken out of context. It’s typically in the context of God saying He’s going to restore the nation of Israel, whatever’s going on with the Babylonians, whatever’s going on with the Moabites or the Edomites or whoever else, that God is going to restore the nation of Israel.

And then He points to a future fulfillment, a future restoration under the Messiah, where He ties what He’s going to be doing in the short term with what he’s going to be doing in the long term. And so ultimately those messages of restoration point to Jesus Christ. Because for him to restore their kingdom, for him to restore their nation, is going to be good for them, but it’s only going to get them so far. I mean, what does it profit us if our country gets straightened out, and our country gets back on the straight and narrow and doing good things, and we still end up separated from God in hell?

It does no good for us, does it? And so this message of the restoration of Israel is always tied to the ultimate restoration through Jesus Christ. And John made it clear, very clear. Verse 8 says that he was not that light, but was sent to bear witness of the light.

John could not do anything to bring anybody spiritual life. No preacher can do anything to bring you spiritual life. I cannot make you close to God.

The best I can do is to point you to the one who can. By the way, if any preacher promises you he’s got some trick or some insight that he can get you closer to God, he is lying to you. That’s not just my opinion.

The Bible teaches that. We cannot be the go-between between you and God. The best we can do is point you to the one who can give you that light, and that’s Jesus Christ. John could not give anyone spiritual life because he was not that light.

But like all of the prophets, his job was to point people in the direction of the spiritual life that God was going to provide to them in Jesus Christ. And so just this little glimpse of John the Baptist here, I’ve read over it dozens of times and missed the importance of it. John the Baptist came as the fulfillment of, as the culmination of these prophecies, as the last one who was going to set the stage and prepare people for what God had been promising all along. And John’s message was entirely and completely about Jesus Christ. It was entirely and completely about the Messiah.

And this points us to the truth that Jesus Christ, the coming of Jesus Christ, has always been at the heart of God’s message. We should not look at the scriptures and just try to make them say whatever we want them to say and make them mean whatever we want them to mean, like the poem about the birds or the painting with the mirror. Just make it up as we go along.

In some ways, it might be easier if we could do that. God would have a lot fewer demands on us if we could just make the word say whatever we wanted it to say. That’s not the way it works.

When God has communicated something, when He’s revealed it through His prophets and through His apostles later on, it was always with a message in mind wanting to reveal something to us that we would understand, first of all, and that we would do. And throughout the Old Testament, in addition to everything else that God was doing and that everything else that God was talking about that He was going to do in the short term, at the heart of the message was always the push toward the cross, was always the movement toward Jesus Christ and His coming and what He was going to accomplish not only through His birth in the manger at Bethlehem, but through His death and burial and resurrection. It’s always been pointing to Jesus Christ. And John was simply the latest in a long line of prophets pointing to Jesus Christ. And we can look and we can see the footsteps that John followed in.

Now, I started making a list of places in the Old Testament that point to Jesus Christ. And let me tell you, that list got out of hand real fast. I could do a whole series. I could do probably a year on references to Jesus in the Old Testament. And I don’t want to keep you here for a year this morning.

You probably don’t want me to keep you here for a year this morning either, right? Are you all awake? If you’re asleep, you don’t care if I keep you here for a year, right?

Somebody’s got to be awake out there. I started making a list. I had to trim it back. So I’m going to share with you a few examples this morning.

But I want you to understand going into it up front, this is not the whole list. But Genesis 3. 15 talks about the one who would defeat Satan. When God said, I will put enmity between you and the woman, speaking to the serpent, and between your seed and her seed, he shall bruise your head, you shall bruise his heel.

Taken in context, that is a picture of what happened at the cross. Satan, as the serpent, thought he inflicted a fatal wound on Jesus Christ, but he only just grazed him. And yet Jesus Christ crushed the head of the serpent because all the plans that Satan had for us, and he thought he had defeated Jesus Christ, By dying at the cross, Jesus Christ paid for our sins in a way that Satan could not overcome.

He was defeated once and for all. In Genesis 7, the ark is a picture of Jesus as the refuge from God’s wrath against sin. Peter talks about Jesus in comparison to the ark.

The only place, by the way, that we would climb into and be safe. The entire world was flooded and destroyed, not because God is mean and angry, but because we deserved it. Because not only the way we treated God, but the way we were treating one another, God stepped in and stopped the madness, flooded the world, and made one way of escape.

And before we look at that and say how cruel it was that God would only make one way of escape, it’s one way more than what mankind deserved. And that ark is a picture of Jesus Christ. In Genesis 22, God provided a sacrifice that only He could have provided when He told Abraham to go and sacrifice His son, And Abraham was prepared to do it and passed the test of faith. And just at that moment, God provided a sacrifice by a ram caught in a thicket by his horns.

And I’ve heard people say, well, how do you know God provided that sacrifice? Number one, I don’t believe necessarily in coincidences. I’ve also seen how male sheep are kind of tough.

We saw the sheep lock horns Friday night at the live nativity, and I thought they were going to pull each other’s heads off. I can’t imagine a full-grown ram just being stuck like a little lamb in a thicket. They’d rip their way out of there.

The fact that he was caught in there tells me that God was involved somehow. God provided that sacrifice. Jesus Christ is expressly in the New Testament called what God promised to Abraham in Genesis chapter 22, the blessing to all nations through Abraham’s lineage.

Because Jesus came from the lineage of Abraham. And through Jesus, God’s salvation is available to the entire world, to anyone who will believe, not just to the Jews, but to the Gentiles as well. He’s the spotless Passover lamb who’s pictured in Exodus chapter 12.

He’s the miraculous baby born to a virgin that’s promised in Isaiah 7. 14. Now you may hear progressive churches tell you, well, that’s not a prophecy.

That says a young woman will bear a child. I don’t have time to get into it this morning. the Lord is speaking short-term about an issue with the royal family of Israel at that time.

But the word here, al-mach in Hebrew, means a young woman or a virgin. It says this will be a sign to you. It’s not particularly noteworthy or remarkable much of a sign that a young woman gives birth.

I mean, if somebody on Medicare gives birth, that’s going to get people’s attention, right? That’s going to be all over Facebook. It’s usually young women, right, that give birth.

That’s not much of a sign. It says a virgin will give birth. That’s what makes it a sign.

And Jesus is the one that’s promised there in Isaiah 7. 14. He was the ruler born in Bethlehem.

I believe we heard this verse quoted already this morning, Micah 5. 2. But you, Bethlehem Ephratah, though you are little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of you shall come forth to me the one to be ruler in Israel, whose goings forth are from old, from everlasting.

He’s the king who entered Jerusalem triumphantly. Zechariah 9. 9 talks about his triumphal entry on Palm Sunday.

Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion. Shout, O daughter of Jerusalem. Behold, your king is coming to you.

He is just and having salvation, lowly and riding on a donkey, a colt, the foal of a donkey. Jesus is the servant who was betrayed for 30 pieces of silver in Zechariah chapter 11, which was fulfilled later on when Judas betrayed Him for 30 pieces of silver. Jesus is the one that Isaiah spoke about who endured torment and humiliation on our behalf when He says, I gave my back to those who struck me and my cheeks to those who plucked out the beard.

I did not hide my face from shame and spitting. Jesus is who David describes in Psalm chapter 22 as the Savior who was crucified. When He says, My strength is dried up like a pot sherd, and my tongue clings to my jaws.

You have brought me to the dust of death. By the way, the thing about the tongue clinging, Jesus said on the cross, I’m thirsty. For the dogs have surrounded me.

The congregation of the wicked have enclosed me. They pierced my hands and feet. Ladies and gentlemen, this was written about a thousand years before Jesus was crucified.

This was written hundreds of years before crucifixion was even a thing in that part of the world. And yet they pierced His hands and feet in Psalm chapter 22. I can count all my bones.

Jesus miraculously did not have His bones broken in the way that they normally did to end the crucifixion that went on too long. They look and stare at Me. They divide My garments among them, and for My clothing they cast lots.

All of that is spelled out in the eyewitness accounts of Jesus’ crucifixion. And then in Isaiah 53, He’s the sacrifice for our sins, where it says, Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted, but He was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities.

The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed. These are just a few of the places where the Old Testament either gives us a prophecy, a promise, or a picture that points us to Jesus Christ. And all of this reminds us that Jesus was not an afterthought. He was not an accident of history.

He’s been at the center of God’s plans all along, and John came to make that that we didn’t have to go and just grope through and try to figure out what the main idea was of God’s revelation and all that God had been trying to do. John came to let us know that Jesus Christ is the main idea. I knew a lady once upon a time.

Once upon a time makes it sound like a fairy tale. It was a few years ago. Does that sound better?

I knew a lady a few years ago who believed that Jesus died on the cross, but didn’t believe that Jesus died to pay for her sins, because she said, I think that he got himself killed and God said, I can make something good come out of this as though God was surprised by it. But folks, the witness of Scripture tells us that it was not an accident. It wasn’t an afterthought.

It wasn’t God making lemonade because life handed him lemons. It was the plan all along. Jesus is the main idea of everything God has done, everything God has said, everything God has revealed.

Jesus was the main idea. and not just Jesus coming, not just Him being born for the sake of being born so that we have a beautiful story to tell at Christmas, but His coming so that He could be our King, so that He could be that perfect sacrifice, so that He could be all the things that God said He would be, so that He could suffer and die on our behalf and rise again to give us hope. Jesus is the main idea of everything that God has done.

And Jesus is at the center of God’s plans for you. You know, I mentioned earlier in the message, Really, I hadn’t even thought about saying it, but God has a plan for each of us. God knows us before we’re born.

He knows us before we’re conceived, and He has a plan for each of us. Folks, Jesus is not just at the center of God’s plans for all of us. Jesus is at the center of those plans for each of us.

God has a plan for your life, and Jesus is at the center of it. Because God created you to know Him. God created you to walk with Him.

God created you for a relationship with Him. and the only way you can have that is because of everything that Jesus Christ did that fulfilled the promises of God. When we were sinners, when I was a sinner separated from God because of my sin, because I had disobeyed God, because I had rebelled against Him, Jesus Christ came and took responsibility for my sins anyway.

When I least deserved His love and His compassion, that’s when He most showed me His love and compassion anyway. He paid for my sins on the cross in full. and rose again to prove it.

And He didn’t just do that for me. He did that for you as well. For you to fulfill the plans that God has for you, for you to have that relationship with Him that He created you for, for you to know Him and walk with Him and understand His love and His compassion and experience the hope that He has provided for you, it begins with Jesus Christ and what the Father sent Him to do.

And so this morning, if you’ve never trusted Jesus Christ as your Savior, you need to understand that what He did not just by being born, but by the life He lived, the death He died for you, and the resurrection where He conquered death for you, by all of that, in all of that, He has been at the center of everything God intends for you. And He offers you forgiveness. All that sin, all that disobedience, all that rebellion, everything in our hearts and in our lives that doesn’t belong there, God can forgive it, and He can wash it away because Jesus Christ paid for it.

And this morning, if you understand that, if you understand that you’ve sinned and need a Savior, you can’t do enough good to try to get in a right relationship with God. But you understand that you’ve sinned and need a Savior, and only Jesus could be that Savior, and you believe that He died for you and rose again, you can ask for that forgiveness, and you can start that relationship with God that He created you for.