WHAT’S NEW THE OLD TESTAMENT: Part 2
Believers understand that the whole Old Testament is pointing forward to the coming of the Messiah for the whole world. Then, the New Testament identifies Him as Jesus Christ. So, we should expect to find many Old Testament verses pointing forward to Jesus. What is extraordinary is where two independent sets of passages when joined with two independent verses become a direct proclamation of the truth about the Messiah and Savior, Jesus Christ.
The first passage is (NASB) Psalm 22:
My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?
Far from my deliverance are the words of my groaning.
2 O my God, I cry by day, but You do not answer;
And by night, but I have no rest.
3 Yet You are holy,
O You who are enthroned upon the praises of Israel.
4 In You our fathers trusted;
They trusted and You delivered them.
5 To You they cried out and were delivered;
In You they trusted and were not disappointed.
6 But I am a worm and not a man,
A reproach of men and despised by the people.
7 All who see me sneer at me;
They separate with the lip, they wag the head, saying,
8 “Commit yourself to the Lord; let Him deliver him;
Let Him rescue him, because He delights in him.”
9 Yet You are He who brought me forth from the womb;
You made me trust when upon my mother’s breasts.
10 Upon You I was cast from birth;
You have been my God from my mother’s womb.
11 Be not far from me, for trouble is near;
For there is none to help.
12 Many bulls have surrounded me;
Strong bulls of Bashan have encircled me.
13 They open wide their mouth at me,
As a ravening and a roaring lion.
14 I am poured out like water,
And all my bones are out of joint;
My heart is like wax;
It is melted within me.
15 My strength is dried up like a potsherd,
And my tongue cleaves to my jaws;
And You lay me in the dust of death.
16 For dogs have surrounded me;
A band of evildoers has encompassed me;
They pierced my hands and my feet.
17 I can count all my bones.
They look, they stare at me;
18 They divide my garments among them,
And for my clothing they cast lots…
The second passage is like it, Isaiah 53:
Who has believed our message?
And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
2 For He grew up before Him like a tender shoot,
And like a root out of parched ground;
He has no stately form or majesty
That we should look upon Him,
Nor appearance that we should be attracted to Him.
3 He was despised and forsaken of men,
A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief;
And like one from whom men hide their face
He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.
4 Surely our griefs He Himself bore,
And our sorrows He carried;
Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken,
Smitten of God, and afflicted.
5 But He was pierced through for our transgressions,
He was crushed for our iniquities;
The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him,
And by His scourging we are healed.
6 All of us like sheep have gone astray,
Each of us has turned to his own way;
But the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him.
7 He was oppressed and He was afflicted,
Yet He did not open His mouth;
Like a lamb that is led to slaughter,
And like a sheep that is silent before its shearers,
So He did not open His mouth.
8 By oppression and judgment He was taken away;
And as for His generation, who considered
That He was cut off out of the land of the living
For the transgression of my people, to whom the stroke was due?
9 His grave was assigned with wicked men,
Yet He was with a rich man in His death,
Because He had done no violence,
Nor was there any deceit in His mouth.
10 But the Lord was pleased
To crush Him, putting Him to grief;
If He would render Himself as a guilt offering,
He will see His offspring,
He will prolong His days,
And the good pleasure of the Lord will prosper in His hand.
11 As a result of the anguish of His soul,
He will see itand be satisfied;
By His knowledge the Righteous One,
My Servant, will justify the many,
As He will bear their iniquities.
12 Therefore, I will allot Him a portion with the great,
And He will divide the booty with the strong;
Because He poured out Himself to death,
And was numbered with the transgressors;
Yet He Himself bore the sin of many,
And interceded for the transgressors.
It should be obvious to anyone reading these passages that this person is rightly proclaimed as the suffering servant who will come into this world to be the savior to many. Jeremiah 31:31 makes this point, “Behold, days are coming, ‘declares the Lord,’ when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah,”. Jews and Muslims need to realize that the word Testament as used in the Titles, Old Testament and New Testament, is merely replacing the word covenant.
There is one more verse, Daniel 9: 26, that unashamedly and indisputably identifies the time and life of the Messiah, Jesus Chris. It reads, 26 “Then after the sixty-two weeks the Messiah will be cut off and have nothing, and the people of the prince who is to come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. And its end will come with a flood; even to the end there will be war; desolations are determined.”
Identifying the “prince who is to come” is important here. That person can only be the Emperor Titus who had Jerusalem destroyed in AD 70. While he was yet a general, his father, Emperor Vespasian Ruled Rome. That makes him the prince of Daniel 9: 26. It says in verse 26 that the Messiah will be cut off. That means that Jesus Christ, who was crucified in 33 AD is the Messiah of the Old Testament. Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53 perfectly describe exactly what Jesus the Christ endured until He died. More than that, the most witnessed and recorded ancient event of all time is that God raised Him from the dead on the third day. This event is so important because it gives validity to the New Testament’s being the New Covenant that we see in Jeremiah 31: 31.
Therefore, Jews, Muslims and Persians are obligated to look at the authority of the Old Testament proclaiming the Good News of Jesus Christ as viewed through the reliable record including the New Testament. God continues to proclaim the Truth as he interacts with all of mankind. He is trying to bring them back into a genuine relationship with the God and Creator of the Universe. The plan all along was to have Jesus Christ pay the price of our sins, so that we might, through faith, enjoy an eternal relationship with Him.