You may be surprised by this. Perhaps you think it would make more sense for me to talk about or prove that the Bible really is the diving and living word of God, or to discuss suffering in the world, why science and christianity don't agree and so on and so forth. However, if I can prove to you that Jesus Christ is the son of God, that he died on a cross at Calvery and rose from the dead three days later, all of the issues I mentioned become irrelevent. It proves that the Bible is dependable and that it was written by God through more than 200 prophecies concerning Jesus, most of which were written hundreds, if not thousands, of years before Jesus was even born. By proving the Bible to be true that then scores out everything else as the Bible addresses it all.
So then, there are three things that I am going to tell you about Jesus:
1) He is the son of God
2) He really did die on the cross and
3) He truly did rise from the dead, ultimately proving he is God.
Depending on how long this gets I may have to split into three separate entries so I don't bore you! (Not that there is anything boring about Jesus).
Okay, number 1...
Jesus is the son of God
The first things I'm going to talk about in relation to this are all the prophecies that I mentioned up there. Now, we're not talking a few little guesses about Jesus scattered here and there, over 200 prophecies were fulfilled by Jesus. They weren't all written (physically) by the same authors, they weren't all written in the same time period, they don't all talk about the same things, NONE of them disagree- it's pretty mind-blowing stuff. We're talking about
- Promises of a Messiah (Saviour) for the world who would rescue it from sin
- Which men he would be descended from (concerning his earthly-adopted father, Joseph): Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the tribe of Judah, King David.
- Where he would be born: Bethlehem
- When he would be born
- That he would be born to a virgin
- That there would be a massacre of infants (this was done by King Herod in attempt to kill the baby born to be King of the Jews)
- That they would flee to Egypt
- Prophesying his ministry in Galilee
- That he would be a prophet
- That he would be a High Priest (in the sense of atoning for our sins, not earthly-literal)
- That he would be rejected by his people, the Jews
- Describing some of his characteristics
- How much money he would be sold for (Judas and his 30 pieces of silver)
- That he would be accused of things he didn't do by false witnesses
- That he would be silent when accused
- How he would be torchered
- How he would die
- That he would die alongside sinners
- That he would be mocked
- That people would gamble for his clothing
- That he would be given gall and vinegar to drink
- That his side would be pierced (this was to prove that he was really dead)
- That NOT ONE bone in his body would be broken (in crucifixion, normally it can take up to three days to die- Jesus died in approx. 6 hours- and the legs of the offenders would usually be broken to speed up the process)
- That he would be buried among the rich
- That he would rise from the dead after 3 days
- That he would be seen by hundreds of people and eat and have fellowship among them
- And that he would ascend back to Heaven to be with his father
My second point is that the whole of the Old Testement, although Jesus isn't there physically (apart from if you believe it was him in the furnace with Radshach, Meshach and Abednego in Daniel 3) the whole of it points towards him. The first mention of a Saviour is right back at the very beginning in the garden of Eden! I can't name all of the pictures of Jesus in the OT but to mention some of them:
- The one door in the ark that Noah built is a picture of how Jesus is the ONLY way to have salvation
- The unblemished ram to sacrifice provided by God to Abraham instead of his son, Isaac whom God had promised to him, even in his and his wife's old age
- Moses is a picture of Jesus as he comes and saves the Hebrews from the Egyptian Pharoh
- The Passover feast, instigated in Egypt before the Hebrews leave. They sacrificed an unblemished lamb and painted the doorposts of their houses with the blood, and when the Lord sent his spirit through Egypt to kill all the first born (the 10th and final plague) he passed over the houses with the marked doorposts. This is a picture of how Jesus (the lamb) died in our place and that if we accept him as our saviour we will be given eternal life.
- The Bronze Snake in the desert (if you read Life? then you will recognise this story!) in which the Isrealites were dying from snake bites after disobeying God and God told Moses to make a snake on a pole made of bronze and that all who looked upon it would be saved (Jesus is the bronze snake).
- The different sacrifices the Isrealites had to make to atone for their sin, set down in the book of Leviticus mostly, point towards Jesus and his role as, not only the High Priest making the sacrifices, but also as the ultimate sacrifice would would be able to atone for ALL sin.
- Joshua leads the Isrealites into the land promised to them by God. This is a picture of what Jesus does for us spiritually.
- Boaz, in the book of Ruth, is pictured as a Redeemer when he redeems the property belonging to Naomi so that Ruth can be his bride. So Jesus has redeemed us by paying the ultimate price for sin, death, so that we can be his (The church is often called The Bride of Christ).
- King David life is a picture of all that Jesus would be, including his birth in Bethlehem.
Now, speaking of miracles, Jesus did enough while he was here to prove he was the son of God, nevermind all the OT stuff! Again, you might choose not to believe it, but once I tell you all about how he definitely died and definitely rose again, we'll have all that sorted out.
Some of you might have been fortunate enough to have gone along to Sunday School or be taught some of these stories in school etc but for those of you who don't know let's give you some examples of what Jesus did while he was here.
He had authority of Nature: He turned water into wine without physically doing anything; he walked on water; he calmed a storm which had experienced fisherman, who knew the sea of Galilee like the back of their hands, terrified; he healed the blind, the deaf, the lame, the terminally ill and the lepers; he raised people from the dead; he fed crowds of thousands of people with only enough food for a few on at least two occassions, with baskets of food leftover!
He had authority over spirits: On multiple occassions Jesus casts out demons, they fear him! He saved a little boy from a demon who was causing him to have epileptic fits and fall into fire and water; he heals two men with demons and allows them to enter into a herd of pigs which then rushed down into the sea and drowned.
He had authority in speech: all through the gospels (The four books at the start of the New Testement which tesitfy to Jesus' life on earth) the religous leaders and teachers are trying to trick Jesus into saying something for which they could condemn him, they tried to "outsmart" him and failed every time. Everything Jesus said was completely perfect and agreed with the scriptures, when people heard him speak they recognised that he spoke with an authority no man before him had. When he healed a lame man one day, he heard the attitude of the pharisees that was in their hearts and answered them. When a woman with internal bleeding touched his cloak while he was passing by so that she may be healed, despite the fact they were in a great crowd he felt that power had gone out of him and spoke to the woman.
These are only the things that are mentioned! At the end of the book of John he says: "Now there are also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I supposed that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written." OOFT. That's a lot of things left out!
In all Jesus did while he was here, he demonstrated that he was the son of God. Even in death: after Jesus gives his spirit up to death (death had no authority over him to take it itself) a Roman centurion recognises that he must have been the son of God.
You can debate the reliability of these historical accounts if you want but just know that, forgetting about how most of it was prophesied hundreds and thousands of years before he was born, four different people wrote accounts of Jesus' life, containing a lot of the same stories and not contradicting one another at all, despite the fact they were from people from different backgrounds writing at different times, some of them who had witnessed events for themselves and others who hadn't, in particular Luke who went about it like an investigation, interviewing witnesses and finding evidence.
I think that's where we'll end if for today, and I'll move onto the next two areas in my next entry!
Continually praying for all who read this, may God bless you and have mercy upon you,
Amy :)
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