ANNOUNCER: Today on Grace in Focus we continue the description of this Messianic thread we observe from running through Scripture. Thanks for being here today, friend. This is a radio ministry of the Grace Evangelical Society. Find out more about us at faithalone.org. Or you can also tune in to our YouTubes at our YouTube channel, Grace Evangelical Society YouTube where we release shorts two or three times a week. So we hope you’ll tune in. That’s Grace Evangelical Society YouTube and our website once again faithalone.org. 

Now we continue our series on the Messianic thread with Bob Wilkin and Philip Sterling. 

BOB: Philippe, we’re taking about this Messianic thread and the last time we talked about how Jesus had introduced this idea in a couple of different texts. But one of the things I wanted to hit before we developed that a little further, there are a lot of prophecies in the Old Testament about Messiah. How many, approximately how many prophecies about Jesus’ First and Second Coming are there? 

PHILIPPE: If we go from Genesis to Malachi and look at both aspects of His coming and His incarnation, His suffering. And then we also look at concerning His rule and Second Coming and the establishment of his rule on on earth. It numbers anywhere depending on who you look at and how you counted, how you divide and individual prophecies. Some of them may have three or four parts to them. But usually the numbers somewhere in the 300 to 375 range that can be pinpointed. 

BOB: And I know Josh McDowell has pointed out that well over 100 of those concerned Jesus’ First Coming, and have all been fulfilled to the letter. 

PHILIPPE: To be born in Bethlehem, would be one.

BOB: Micah 5:2. And then they pierced my hands and my feet.  

PHILIPPE: Psalm 22. We see much of Psalm 22 applies to Jesus. And He Himself on the cross when He said, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me.” He’s quoting the first line out of Psalm 22. But that was the way to refer to the entire Psalm. 

BOB: Yeah. So basically saying this Psalm’s about me. Because Psalm 22 ends with His rule and reign. 

PHILIPPE: Right. And it also includes the cast lots for My clothing. 

BOB: Another fulfilled prophecy. So there’s over 100 prophecies about Christ’s First Coming, all fulfilled, maybe I don’t know, we don’t have the exact number. And then there’s a lot more about his Second Coming, his ruling and reigning forever. And all of these are part of this Messianic thread. But on top of that, the Messianic thread also deals with actual appearances of the Messiah to people in the Old Testament. 

PHILIPPE: Yes. And beginning, I think, in the Garden of Eden, who’s walking in the cool of the day with Adam and Eve? Who came to call out where Adam? 

BOB: And who’s talking to Cain? Will not your countenance rise if you do well. 

PHILIPPE: And then the appearances of these personages sometimes identified as the angel of Yahweh. 

BOB: Well, let’s talk a little bit more about what Jesus said with the Messianic thread. Last time we talked about the two disciples on the road to Emmaus and how Jesus opened the Scriptures concerning Him. 

PHILIPPE: Yes. And Luke 24:7 is that reference. 

BOB: And which Scripture specifically does Luke 24:7 mention? Does it say the Psalms and the Prophets? 

PHILIPPE: That’s it. Luke 24:7, “saying the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and raised on the third day.” In verse 25, He says, “O, foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken! Ought not the Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into His glory?” 

BOB: And then verse 27, “And beginning at Moses,” which by the way, this is a statement from Luke that Moses wrote the Pentateuch, right? 

PHILIPPE: Yes, the authorship is definitely established there. 

BOB: And of course, Jesus said the same thing, but it says here, “And beginning at Moses and all the prophets.” So by the way, that means Moses was a prophet, right? And David was too, right? 

PHILIPPE: David refers to himself in his final words, I think it’s 2 Samuel 24 as the inspired psalmist of Israel, the Holy Spirit, he says, spoke by him. And of course, Peter, refers to David as a prophet in Acts. 

But he says, “And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself.” So all the Scriptures might be again the entire corpus of the Old Testament. 

BOB: Yeah. And when you’re reading in the New Testament about the Scriptures, we’re thinking of what we call the Old Testament. And because you didn’t have, other than when you have like in 2 Peter 3, where Peter talks about Paul’s writings and people who twist the meaning. All the Scriptures. So now he’s including Paul’s writings as Scripture.

PHILIPPE: Yes. And so this is to the two on the road to Emmaus, but later on He appears to all the apostles, verse 44, when He appears to them. And he says, I’m a real person, just touch My hands, My feet. And then verse 44 says, “These are the words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms concerning me.” 

BOB: So he mentions again that Moses wrote the Pentateuch and that Moses prophesied. I’m thinking of Deuteronomy 18:15-18. 

PHILIPPE: He was a prophet and then there will be one like him that will come, a greater prophet. 

BOB: But there’s a whole lot more in the Pentateuch about Messiah. Lots of types and things, Abraham offering up Isaac is a type of the Messiah. New Testament tells us this.

PHILIPPE: Yes. And also as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness. 

BOB: What’s that, Numbers 22, maybe? 

PHILIPPE: Numbers 22 and of course John 3. 

BOB: Yeah, John 3:14-15. 

ANNOUNCER: The Grace Evangelical Society’s recently published Old Testament Commentary, Volume One is now available. Find it at faithalone.org/store. It’s where you can also find Bob Wilkin’s latest book, The Gospel is Still Under Siege, as well as many other titles by Grace Evangelical Society authors. Please come by and have a look today. You’ll find the GES store at our website, faithalone.org. That’s faithalone.org/store. Now back to today’s topic.

BOB: So this is a fantastic verse and it’s talking about the fact that He opened this. So he’s talking about this Messianic thread. So it’s interesting, it seems to me Philippe that there’s an interplay between what we call the Old Testament and the New Testament. That is in order to properly understand the Old Testament, we need the New Testament. But in order to properly understand the New Testament, we need the Old Testament. Isn’t it true goes both ways? 

PHILIPPE: Oh, yes, and that ultimately talks about the unity of our Scripture and the theme that unifies it all. And even when we’re to ask what are the indicators of that Messianic thread that we can, there are passages in the Old Testament that are directly prophetic, such as Micah 5:2, you will be born in Bethlehem, this one who’s coming of from everlasting. And I think f Isaiah 7:14 about the virgin conception of the one who will come I think is directly prophetic. 

And then there’s some others, there’s many passages that we might say are indirectly prophetic, such as when we look at Isaac, in this sacrifice of Isaac, Genesis 22. And Yahweh was stopping Abraham, in the final moment, from plunging the knife into Isaac, but then the statement says “In the mount of the Lord, it will be provided.” looking to a greater one to come and be actually sacrificed. But it’s indirectly prophetic. We put it all together there as we look at the passage and it says, well, it is getting to the Christ. 

And then we come to all the definite identifications that are made in the New Testament. And so we can go back in, for example, in looking at Moses in the wilderness holding up the serpent. And just look at that, I think it is, like I said, Numbers 22, we probably wouldn’t have made that connection, right, in just our reading of the Book of Numbers. But when we see what John records for us in John 3, and it says, Oh, well, that was indeed a type, it did point to Jesus. 

BOB: Or even water coming out of a rock. Why would we think of the rock being Christ and water coming out of the rock being having some Messianic connection? Paul makes that. 

PHILIPPE: In 1 Corinthians 10, he says, and the rock that was following them was Christ. And so again, and I think that points back to the personage of the preincarnate Christ, that was there in the pillar of fire by night and the pillar of cloud in the day time. And when Moses was told on the first occasion to strike the rock, that was Christ, the preincarnate Christ, that caused the water to come out. Then the second time, of course, at the end of the wilderness wandering period, Yahweh told Moses just to speak to the rock, and he strikes it too. 

BOB: He doesn’t get to go into the Promised Land. He gets to see it, but he doesn’t get to go in. Well, this is fantastic thread. Now, what about 1 Peter, you have a note here about 1 Peter 1. What does Peter say about the Messianic thread? And there’s also another verse from John, that’s one of my favorites, but we may have to get that next time because we’re getting low on time. John 5:39. Oh, I love that. 

PHILIPPE: 1 Peter 1:10 says, ” Of this salvation,” and that’s the matter of the inheritance. 

BOB: That’s not salvation from eternal condemnation. 

PHILIPPE: Right, the deliverance into reward, basically. But “the prophets have inquired and searched carefully, who prophesied of the grace that would come to you.” And the grace, I think, takes us back into Genesis 3.  And “searching what, or what manner of time, the Spirit of Christ who was in them was indicating when He testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glories that will follow.” 

BOB: So those are both the First and Second Coming. The sufferings of Christ, First Coming, the glories to follow. So Peter is talking about the Messianic thread. 

PHILIPPE: Yes, exactly. And note, “To them it was revealed that, not to themselves, but to us, they were ministering the things which now have been reported to you through those who have preached the gospel,” the good news, “to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven.” And note again, “things which angels desire to look into.”So the angels were privy to it all as they were observing it all from Genesis onward. And they themselves were trying to put together, follow that thread and trying to understand it all. But it was all also for us, that Peter says. It was set out. 

BOB: Well, this is fantastic stuff Philippe. We’ll pick up from there, John 5:39-40. And then we’re going to talk about some of the other indications of the Messianic thread. But in the meantime, let’s keep grace in focus. 

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On our next episode: the benefits of following the Messianic thread. We hope you’ll join us for that and until then, let’s keep grace in focus.