Old Testament Pointers to Jesus

Good morning,

My name is Graeme Pringle. I work of the Diocese of Coventry, and my wife Jan and I have been worshipping at St Paul’s for the past couple of years.

This morning we are thinking about “Old Testament Pointers to Jesus”.

As most of you will know, the Old Testament contains the writings of many prophets.

These were people who received very clear messages from God, and these messages got written down, and we can read them today in our Bible.

Now, some of these prophesies related to events that occurred during the lifetime of the prophet, or shortly afterwards. Often these messages were delivered to the king, who usually chose to ignore them. But when events turned out exactly as the prophet said they would, people realised that these messages were in fact sent from God.

But not all prophesies related to events that occurred during the lifetime of the prophet. Some of these messages were pointers to the distant future, when God would send a saviour …a future Messiah, which means ‘anointed one’.

With the benefit of hindsight, Christians believe that these messages were pointing to Jesus, who was born several hundreds of years after they were written down. They point to his birth, his life, his death, and his resurrection …with some incredible detail.

For example:

SLIDE 1

There is a prophecy that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem

Micah 5:2

“But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times.”

And we all know the Nativity story that, due to a census, Mary and Joseph had to leave their home town of Nazereth and travel to Bethelehem, where Jesus was born,

A prophecy that the Messiah would be heir to King David's throne

2 Samuel 7:12-13

Speaking to King David… “When your days are over and you rest with your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, your own flesh and blood, and I will establish his kingdom. He is the one who will build a house for my Name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.”

And if you trace Jesus’s family tree, he was in fact a direct descendent of King David.

A prophecy that the Messiah would be heal the broken-hearted

Isaiah 61:1

“The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners.”

And during the years of his public ministry, Jesus spent three years doing just that.

A prophecy that Messiah would be mocked and ridiculed

Psalm 22:7-8

“All who see me mock me; they hurl insults, shaking their heads.

“He trusts in the Lord,” they say, “let the Lord rescue him. Let him deliver him, since he delights in him.”

And on the cross, people ridiculed Jesus. Saying, “If you are the Son of God, then come down from the cross.

It’s amazing to think that all of these prophesies, that were pointers to Jesus, were written hundreds of years before his birth.

And so I could go one.

In fact, someone has counted that the Old Testament contains over 400 of these pointers to Jesus. So, you’ll be pleased to know that, this morning, we are going to be looking at less than half of them.

…Actually, we are only going to look at one of them, in quite some detail. The one that ??? has just read for us this morning,

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But before, before we go any further, I need to say something about perspective …and the nature of Old Testament prophesy.

Take a look at this photo.

SLIDE 2

It’s a photo of my wife, Jan, standing beside our car.

(Pause)

At least, that’s what it looked like from my perspective when I took the photo.

In reality, she was standing quite a long way in front of the car, as this photo makes clear.

SLIDE 3

It is a photo of exactly the same thing.

I promise you that neither Jan, nor the car, have moved an inch. The only thing that has changed is my perspective.

When taking the second photo, I stood in a different position and used a different lens.

(Pause)

A similar thing happens with the messages that the Old Testament prophets received from God.

With the benefit of hindsight we might analyse the different parts of a prophecy and say …these verses are talking about events that were fulfilled during the lifetime of the prophet

…and this verse was pointing to the birth of Jesus that happened 700 years later

…and these particular verses are pointing to things that have yet to happen, and we are still waiting for them to be fulfilled.

In other words, just like this second photo shows a big gap between Jan and the car…we see can see big gaps in time between the different parts of the prophecy.

(Pause)

But the prophet was looking at these events from a different perspective to us, and he couldn’t see these gaps in time like we can.

SLIDE 4

To him, the picture that he was describing looked more like the first photo, where everything looked closer together.

Both he and we are looking at exactly the same thing.

But what we see looks different, because our perspective is different.

The prophet doesn’t see the gaps in time the same way that we can.

(Pause)

REMOVE SLIDE

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So let’s now consider the prophet Isaiah.

Isaiah is often said to be the greatest of the Old Testament prophets, and he lived in Judah around 700 BC.

To put that in context, that’s over a 1000 years after the series stories that we have been studying this term. Those concerning Abraham, Isaac, Joseph and others.

Much had happened during those 1000 years.

We finished the series with Joseph and his brothers living comfortably in Egypt, with Joseph being the Prime Minister.

400 years later, their descendent had greatly multiplied, but their fortunes had completely changed. They were longer living in luxury, …in fact they were now slaves in Egypt.

God sent Moses to rescue these people out of slavery, and he brought them to the ‘promised land’, which today we call Israel and Palestine.

At first they are ruled by judges …like Samson and Gideon.

Then they appoint their first kings, …Saul, David and Solomon.

And then the nation begins to fall apart.

In 930 BC the nation literally divided in two, with the Northern Kingdom retaining the name Israel, and the Southern Kingdom taking the name Judah.

From that point onwards there were two kings, and two capital cities …one in the north, and one in the south.

Most of these kings were bad kings. They led the people away from God, into the worship of idols, and the oppression of the poor.

And this is the period of history when all the great prophets make their appearance. God sent some of the prophets to the kings in the Northern Kingdom of Israel, with messages from God. Prophets like:

Elijah

Amos

Hosea

And a bit later, God sent different prophets to the kings in the Southern Kingdom of Judah, also with messages from God. Prophets like:

Isaiah

Jeremiah

Ezekiel

And all of these prophets brought messages from God that had two main themes… words of warning, and words of hope.

The words of warning were along the lines that, unless the king and his people turned back to God, (in other words they stopped worshipping idols and they stopped oppressing the poor) …unless they turned back to God, they would be overcome by disaster.

The words of hope were that when disaster strikes …even then, if they would only turn back to God, God would bless them, and restore their fortunes.

Unfortunately, the kings and the people mostly ignored these warnings. Disaster struck both the North and the South.

In the North, disaster struck in 722 BC. The Northern Kingdom was conquered by the Assyrian Empire, and many of its people were deported to the area we now call northern Iraq. As you can imagine, these were very traumatic times.

And it was during these awful times that the prophet Isaiah, who was living in the Southern Kingdom of Judah, delivered his messages from God.

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Some of Isaiah’s messages were clearly intended for the people of the Northern Kingdom (who had already been taken into exile). Some were intended for the king and people of the Southern Kingdom.

And then there are other passages (like the one that ??? read to us this morning) where it would have been less clear who Isaiah was addressing, and when the message would be fulfilled.

So let’s take a closer look at Isaiah 11.

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ISAIAH 11.1

11 A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse;

from his roots a Branch will bear fruit.

So what does Isaiah mean by the “stump of Jesse”?

Well Jesse was the father of King David. So he is talking about the family tree of King David.

All the Kings of Judah (in the Southen Kingdom) were the direct descendants of King David, and thus descendants of David’s father Jesse.

But Isaiah is saying that this royal family tree is going to be cut down. All that will be left will be a stump.

People will think that the tree is dead …but amazingly, a new shoot will come up from this stump, which will grow into a Branch, and it will bear fruit.

(Pause)

With the benefit of hindsight, Christians would say that this verse was pointing to Jesus, the Messiah.

At the very beginning of his Gospel, Matthew makes this very point by carefully tracing out the genealogy of Jesus. Beginning with Abraham, to whom God had promised to bless all the peoples of the earth.

Matthew traces his family tree through the people we were thinking about this term… Isaac, Jacob, Judah

…all the way down to Jesse, King David and his son Solomon.

…and then through all the Kings of Judah.

…and finally to “Joseph, the husband of Mary, who was the mother of Jesus who is called the Messiah.”

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Jesus was born 700 years after this prophecy was given by Isaiah.

(Pause)

Did Isaiah realise that this message from God related to events that would take place 700 years later?

Probably not.

The chapters surrounding this passage relate to events that would take place in his lifetime, or shortly afterwards. And he probably assumed that these words related to the same time-frame.

But that was from his perspective ….where these events appeared to be close together. (Think back to the photo where Jan appeared to be standing next to the car.)

From our perspective …we can see big gaps in time, between different sections of his prophecies.

So lets read on, and as we do so think about what you know of Jesus, …and see how closely this description fits him…

ISAIAH 11.2-5

2 The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him—

the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding,

the Spirit of counsel and of might,

the Spirit of the knowledge and fear of the Lord—

3 and he will delight in the fear of the Lord.

He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes,

or decide by what he hears with his ears;

4 but with righteousness he will judge the needy,

with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth.

He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth;

with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked.

5 Righteousness will be his belt

and faithfulness the sash around his waist.

I think you’ll agree, that these verses provide an accurate picture of Jesus, …and it is amazing to think that they were written 700 years before he was born.

Incidentally, if you are wondering about verse 4, where it says “with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked”,

just think about the way that Jesus, by his death and resurrection, defeated the ultimate enemies of the Satan and death.

(Pause.)

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But what I find even more fascinating are the next few verses.

But before we read them, I just want us to reflect on the events of the past two weeks.

A week last Friday, at ten to seven in the morning, I received a phone call. I don’t know about you, but I hate early morning phone calls, because they are often bad news.

This phone call was from the local BBC radio station.

My job is Director of Communications for our diocese. And I was being rung by a radio producer who wanted to know if the Bishop of Coventry would be willing to be interviewed on air in an hour’s time about his thoughts on Nelson Mandela (who had died the a few hours earlier).

I felt a bit awkward ringing the Bishop so early in the morning, especially since Friday was his day off, …so I took the coward’s way out, and sent him a text message. I thought, if he’s awake he will pick it up.

And sure enough, he rang me straight back saying that he was very happy to be interviewed.

Listening to what Bishop Christopher said on the radio about Mandela reinforced the huge impact that the vision of one man had made.

In his early life, Nelson Mandela was a freedom fighter. Some called him a terrorist, because he believed that the evils of apartheid could only be overcome by violent means.

But his views changed during the years that he was incarcerated on Robben Island. A vision for a different kind of South Africa grew within him, a vision in which violence would have no part.

(Pause)

The “Rainbow Nation” was a term that was coined by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, but it was then developed by Nelson Mandela. In a speech made by Mandela during his first month of office as President he said:

"Each of us is as intimately attached to the soil of this beautiful country as are the famous jacaranda trees of Pretoria - a rainbow nation at peace with itself and the world."

One man’s vision changed a nation.

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Isaiah was also a man of vision.

And in these final verses that we are looking at this morning, he paints a picture of what the whole earth will be like one day.

ISAIAH 11.6-10

6 The wolf will live with the lamb,

the leopard will lie down with the goat,

the calf and the lion and the yearling[a] together;

and a little child will lead them.

7 The cow will feed with the bear,

their young will lie down together,

and the lion will eat straw like the ox.

8 The infant will play near the cobra’s den,

and the young child will put its hand into the viper’s nest.

9 They will neither harm nor destroy

on all my holy mountain,

for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord

as the waters cover the sea.

10 In that day the Root of Jesse will stand as a banner for the peoples; the nations will rally to him, and his resting place will be glorious.

The final sentence refers again the Root of Jesse. Who, Christians see as a pointer to Jesus the Messiah.

From our perspective there is another huge gap of time between these verses and the ones that we read earlier.

Verses 2 to 5 are pointing to the coming of Jesus to earth 2000 years ago (his life, death and resurrection).

These verses are pointing to future coming again of Jesus, for which we are still waiting.

On that day the whole of creation will be renewed, as heaven and earth come together.

Death and evil will be destroyed for ever “the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.”.

It’s an amazing vision.

It’s a vision that Jesus expounded upon. He called it the Kingdom of God.

It’s a vision that Jesus told us to pray for. In the Lord’s Prayer to told us to pray that God’s Kingdom may “come on earth as it is in heaven.”

It’s a vision that gripped St Paul and the other New Testament writers. The whole earth being transformed when Jesus comes again and heaven and earth are joined together.

But it is also a vision that each of us has been commissioned to work for here and now.

Seeing Leamington changed one life at a time is part of this bigger vision of the Kingdom of God.

Working for the relief and eradication of poverty (eg through Foodbanks) is part of this bigger vision.

Jesus wants each of us to be working in whatever way we can to bring the Kingdom of God on earth. It won’t happen fully until Jesus returns, but in the meantime, Jesus wants to work through his followers here and now.

So be inspired by Isaiah’s vision …written at least two and a half thousand years ahead of its time.

Pray that God will expand your vision of what the Kingdom of God could become.

And if you ever doubt the power that a God-given vision can achieve …remember Nelson Mandela.