We pick up today’s reading following the Emmaus Road story which we considered last week: 36 As they were talking about these things, Jesus himself stood among them, and said to them, “Peace to you!” 37 But they were startled and frightened and thought they saw a spirit. 38 And he said to them, “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? 39 See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me, and see. For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” 40 And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. 41 And while they still disbelieved for joy and were marveling, he said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?” 42 They gave him a piece of broiled fish, 43 and he took it and ate before them. 44 Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” 45 Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, 46 and said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, 47 and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. 48 You are witnesses of these things. 49 And behold, I am sending the promise of my Father upon you. But stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.” 50 Then he led them out as far as Bethany, and lifting up his hands he blessed them. 51 While he blessed them, he parted from them and was carried up into heaven. 52 And they worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy, 53 and were continually in the temple blessing God.
What are we to learn from this? At the very least we should note that Jesus wanted his disciples to know and Luke wants us to know that the patterns for Jesus’ life, ministry, death, resurrection, and ongoing Lordship were set forth in the Old Testament. Let me repeat: the patterns for Jesus’ life, ministry, death, resurrection, and ongoing Lordship were set forth in the Old Testament.
I was taught in seminary that the Five Books of Moses were actually pasted together from at least four competing and contradictory documents, all written long after the time of Moses. I was also taught that the book of Isaiah was written over parts of four centuries by at least three authors, known as First, Second, and Third Isaiah. No book of the Bible emerged unscathed from the treatment of my professors.
For most of them, their basic belief was that real divine inspiration was impossible, that anything in the Bible which seemed to prophesy something that happened later had actually been written after the prophesied event took place and then fictionally projected back into the past so that it would appear to have prophesied what was already known to have happened by the time it was written.
When Luke reports that Jesus says that the patterns of his life, ministry, death, and resurrection were set forth in the Old Testament and we contrast that to what I was taught in seminary, we have a dilemma. We must make a choice. Either Luke was lying or just plain wrong that Jesus said such a thing, or Jesus was lying or just plain wrong that the Old Testament set forth the patterns of his redeeming work, or my seminary professors were lying or just plain wrong that predictive prophecy is impossible. Guess whom I think to be most likely lying or just plain wrong. Let’s see, Jesus, the apostles, or my professors? Fortunately, we have a way of testing this. We can carefully read the Old Testament.
1. No sensible person claims that the Old Testament was written after the time of Jesus. Conservatives and liberals, skeptics and believers, all agree that the Old Testament writings were completed well before the first century A.D. The evidence is indisputably solid.
2. Many hundreds of passages in the Old Testament foreshadow some aspect of Jesus’ life, ministry, death, or resurrection. Taken together, they give a rich picture of what Jesus actually did. While he could have intentionally fulfilled a few of them, many required the miraculous powers of a Sovereign God, and others happened to Jesus in ways that he could not humanly control. We are compelled to conclude that predictive prophecy happened and that the Old Testament foretells many details of Jesus’ redemptive work.
3. The body of Old Testament passages that foretell the life of Christ are so numerous, they come from so many parts of the Old Testament, and their fulfillment is demonstrated in so many strands of the New Testament, that a serious and open-minded student can only conclude that a Higher Intelligence is behind the writing of the whole Bible and that the Bible is indeed the inspired word of God.
4. I am delighted to tell you that, despite the impression you might get from news magazines and so-called educational television, despite what some intellectually lazy seminary professors are still teaching, many faithful Bible scholars are doing the hard, disciplined, detailed work on which the foundation for firm faith can be built. I believe that there has never been a time when more advances have been made in recovering and defending the faith of the Bible than in the last four decades. The real and solid work moves in a quite different direction from what gets the attention of our information media.
We live in an exciting time for Bible scholarship in which Bible—believing scholars are making great and far-reaching discoveries that help us see and explain the great truths of the inspired Scriptures, truths that affirm the authenticity of the gospel of Jesus Christ. They do this not by reading their own views into Scripture. They do it by rigorous study of the original, inspired writings, uncovering the truths that have been there all along just waiting to be noticed. A large number of Bible-believing scholars are now doing research that beats the socks off the old skeptical theories. Let me mention two of the many:
First, John Sailhamer, who teaches at Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary in California, has made a career of showing how deeply imbedded prophecies of the Christ are in the Five Books of Moses and in the rest of the Old Testament. I am not prepared to summarize Sailhamer’s rich and complex work in this sermon, but let me list out of my own head ten of the many things about Christ and his gospel that were anticipated in the Five Books of Moses:
1. Genesis 1 shows that human beings were created in the image of God so that they could represent God’s nature and purposes through their dominion over the earth and its creatures, preparing us to see that Christ came to restore the image of God in us.
2. Genesis 2 and 3 show that human beings were created for intimate and restful relationship with God, a state of perfect blessing in which they can hear and obey God, preparing us to see that Christ came as the presence of God and as the One who sends the Holy Spirit to live within his followers.
3. Genesis 3 shows that despite human sin, a descendant of Eve would arise who would decisively defeat the ancient serpent, Satan, the deceiver of the world, preparing us to recognize Christ’s victory over evil.
4. Genesis 6--9 show that God is committed to working with sinful human beings over a long history to redeem them from sin, and that he is willing to bear the cost of their atonement himself. This he symbolized in the rainbow covenant with Noah.
5. Genesis 22 shows that God himself must provide the necessary sacrifice and that God could restore whatever was sacrificed, preparing us to believe that Jesus came to die on the cross for our sins and to be restored to life, this being a point of the story of Abraham’s nearly sacrificing Isaac. It is from that story that we draw words of scripture passages such as, “God…gave his only Son,” and “He who did not spare his own Son….” What God spared Abraham, he himself gave and then restored.
6. From Moses’ account of the Day of Atonement in Levitcus 16, we conclude that identifying ourselves with a perfect and costly sacrifice is a necessary part of our being atoned, and we so identify ourselves when we are baptized into Christ.
7. Genesis 14 shows that the Melchizedek model of divine priesthood precedes Aaron’s priestly line and the Melchizedek model of the divine kingship precedes David’s kingly line, pointing to the fact that, from the beginning, before there was an Israel, or an Aaron, or a David, God planned the redemption of believers from every people and tongue and ethnic group and nation.
8. Genesis 49:8-10 shows that, nevertheless, there will be a future divine king descended from Judah. Salvation begins from the Jews and then extends to the world.
9. Genesis and Exodus both show that the righteousness of God will be restored to humanity by God’s grace received through human faith (this concept is not just in the New Testament but was already present in the two oldest books of the Old Testment).
10. Deuteronomy 18 and 34 show that the people of God would not fulfill God’s will until the coming of a future Prophet like Moses who would enable them to enter into righteousness. When Luke and John report conversations that point to Jesus as the Prophet like Moses, their readers and hearers were prepared to make the connection that the prophetic vision of the Five Books of Moses was being fulfilled.
Now let’s shift from Sailhamer to Alec Motyer (pronounced like Mateer). Motyer, retired principal and Old Testament professor of Trinity College, Bristol, England, with pastoral experience in both the Church of Ireland and the Church of England, has been publishing Old Testament scholarship for nearly four decades. He has shown how thoroughly the Old Testament anticipates the New Testament. He is best known for his work on Isaiah in which he tells us that the three sections of Isaiah are not written by Three Isaiahs, but by One Isaiah with a unified, divinely inspired message about three dimensions of the Messiah.
1. The Messiah King comes as a light in the Galilean darkness to introduce the reign of God into human history. Jesus fulfilled this by introducing his kingdom ministry in Galilee.
2. The Messiah Servant comes to reconcile humanity to God by offering a once-for-all atoning sacrifice. Jesus fulfilled this by his death on the cross.
3. The Messiah Conqueror comes in power to bring all opposition under his feet and to usher in the victory of the people of God. This stage of the work of Jesus has already begun and will come to completion with his return to bring a new heaven and new earth where the righteous faithful will reign with him forever in a restored creation fully actualizing God’s perfect purposes.
Now, is that not a more useful and convincing message than the mass of confusion we receive from the skeptical scholars?
I have mentioned two of many reputable scholars whose work in seldom noticed by the information media. Sailhamer is Southern Baptist; Motyer is Anglican; that defines a wide spectrum of churches. We could fill in the spectrum with Presbyterians and Methodists and many more branches of our common faith in Jesus and in the inspiration and authority of the Scriptures. My point is that this is not a narrow group of scholars.
The bottom line is that the evidence is massive and growing that Jesus was right, that everything written about him either has been or must be fulfilled, and that for the sake of our redemption from sin and deliverance into blessed life now and eternal life in a perfect new creation. That calls for our faith and commitment to Jesus and for our deep appreciation and study of God’s inspired Word.
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