His Birth, Death & Resurrection

 

“Then He (Jesus) said to them,
‘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.’
And He opened their understanding,
that they might comprehend the Scriptures.”
(Luke 24:44-45)

 

Jesus Christ in English … Yeshua Ha’Mashiach in Hebrew. Jesus is His Name, and Christ is His Title. He is the Alpha and the Omega. He is the beginning. He is the end. The Kingdom of Heaven has a King. He is the King. He stepped forth from Eternity to dwell with man, as a man. Every book in the Bible mysteriously points toward Him. Israel was removed from the Land when they rejected Him. Israel has been brought back into the Land to witness His return. His past is our past and His future is our future …

 

The Bible is God’s personal message to Man. Although written over a vast number of years, it is perfectly integrated and consistent, showing the design of a single Author directing chosen men to write down His words. To prove that God is who He says He is, and to set the Bible apart from all other “religions” which would rise, God had His prophets write down, in detail, events that were going to happen in the future. Jesus said, “Search the Scriptures, for they testify of Me.” God tells us He will do nothing significant affecting the nation Israel or the world without first providing a warning, or warnings in advance, through His prophets …

 

“Surely the Lord GOD does nothing,
unless He reveals His secret
to His servants the prophets.”
(Amos 3:7)

 

If this is true (and the Bible tells us that God cannot lie) then God would have prepared Israel (and the World) for the Messiah (Christ in English) and He would have included enough detail to insure that there could be no question as to His identity. 

 

Jesus said, “Search the Scriptures, for they testify of Me.”

 

The ancient Holy Scriptures, sometimes called the Tanakh or “Old Testament,” from which the following prophecies are taken, were written 400 to 1,400 years before Jesus Christ was born.

So, these following prophecies of the Messiah (Christ) from the ancient Hebrew Scriptures were being copied, read, and distributed to synagogues around the world hundreds of years before Jesus was even born!

 

 

What prophetic details did God carefully weave

into the ancient Holy Scriptures concerning the coming Messiah?

 

 

He would be born of a virgin

“Behold,
the virgin shall conceive
and bear a Son,
and shall call His name Immanuel”
(Immanuel literally means “God with us”)
(Isaiah 7:14)

 

He would be the Son of God

“For unto us a Child is born,
unto us a Son is given,
and His Name will be called Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”
(Isaiah 9:6)

 

God first ‘publicly’ introduced His Son to Mankind around 1000 years before Christ was born in a Psalm from King David …

 

“I (God) have set MY King
on My Holy Hill of Zion. (Jerusalem)
I (God) will declare the Decree:
The LORD (GOD)
has said to Me (Messiah),
You are MY SON
this day
I (God) have begotten You.
Ask of Me, and I will give You
the nations (Gentiles)
for Your inheritance,
and the ends of the Earth
for Your possession …”
(Psalm 2:6-7)

 

“Kiss the Son (of God)
lest He be angry,
and you perish in the way,
when His wrath is kindled but a little.
BLESSED are all those
who trust in Him.”
(Psalm 2:12)

 

And from the Wisdom of Proverbs …

“Who has established
all the ends of the Earth?
What is HIS Name,
and what is HIS SON’S NAME,
if you know?
(Jesus Christ … Yeshua Ha’Mashiach in Hebrew)
(Proverbs 30:4)

 

He would be born in Bethlehem . . .
AFTER leaving His place in Eternity

“But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah,
though you are little
among the thousands of Judah,
Yet out of you
shall come forth to Me
The One to be Ruler in Israel,
Whose goings forth
have been from of old, (eternal)
from EVERLASTING.”
(“Everlasting to everlasting” is a title of God)
(Micah 5:2)

 

He would ride triumphantly into Jerusalem, yet meek and lowly … riding on a donkey

“Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion (Israel)!
Behold, your King is coming to you;
He is just and having salvation,
yet He is lowly
and riding on a donkey.”
(Zechariah 9:9)

 

He would be betrayed by a friend

“Even my own familiar friend
in whom I trusted,
who ate My bread,
has lifted up his heel against Me.”
(Psalm 41:9)

 

They would set a price on Him of 30 pieces of silver …
which would then be thrown into the potter’s field

“So they weighed out for my wages
thirty pieces of silver.
And the LORD said to me,
‘Throw it to the potter’ –
that princely price they set on Me.”
(Zechariah 11:12-13)

 

He would be meek and humble

“He had no beauty or majesty
to attract us to Him,
nothing in His appearance
that we should desire Him.”
(Isaiah 53:2 NIV)

 

We would despise Him and reject Him …
He would feel the pain of rejection

“He is despised
and rejected by men, (Mankind … men and women)
A Man of sorrows
and acquainted with grief.”
(Isaiah 53:3)

 

We would turn our backs on Him …
and look the other way as He went by

“And we hid, as it were,
our faces from Him;
He was despised,
and we did not esteem Him.”
(Isaiah 53:3)

 

He would be rejected by Israel

“The Redeemer of Israel,
their Holy One,
To Him whom man despises,
To Him whom the nation abhors.”
(Isaiah 49:7)

 

He would suffer … and be brutally beaten

“So His appearance
was marred more than any man”
(Isaiah 52:14)

 

He would be beaten and bloodied … He would die for our sins

“But He was wounded
for our transgressions,
He was bruised for our iniquities;
The chastisement (punishment)
for our peace was upon Him,
And by His stripes (whip lashes)
we are healed.
And the LORD has laid on Him
the iniquity (sin) of us all.”
(Isaiah 53:5-7)

 

He would remain silent during His ordeal

“He was led as a lamb to the slaughter,
And as a sheep before its shearers is silent,
So He opened not His mouth.”
(Isaiah 53:7)

 

He would be Crucified …
a torturous and agonizing death

“All My bones are out of joint …
My tongue clings to My jaws;
They pierced My hands and My feet,
They look and stare at Me.”
(Psalm 22:14, 15, 16, 17)

 

He would have stakes (nails) driven through His hands

“And someone will say to Him,
‘What are these wounds in your hands?’
Then He will answer,
‘Those with which I was wounded
in the house of my friends.'”
(Zechariah 13:6)

 

He would be mocked during His time of suffering and death

“A reproach of men and
despised of the people,
They shoot out the lip,
they shake the head, saying
‘He trusted in the Lord,
let Him rescue Him;'”
(Psalm 22:7-8)

 

They would cast lots for His clothes

“They divide my garments among them,
and for My garments they cast lots.”
(Psalm 22:18)

 

He would SUFFER terribly on the Cross

“My God, My God, why have You forsaken me?”
(Psalm 22:1 … Matthew 27:46)

 

With these words from the Cross, Jesus was pointing the Jewish leaders to Psalm 22 …

The Jewish leaders who were gathered around the Cross knew the Scriptures well. Psalm 22 is a detailed prophecy foretelling the death of Jesus, the Messiah, on the Cross, written a thousand years before the Cross and written centuries before this form of execution was even invented – written when the Jewish form of execution was stoning.

 

His side would be pierced

“Then they will look upon Me
whom they have pierced;
they will mourn for Him
as one mourns for his only son,
and grieve for Him as one grieves for a firstborn.”
(Zechariah 12:10 – a prophecy of His Return)

 

The Sun would go down at noon
and darken the Earth in broad daylight

“And on that Day,” declares the Lord God,
“I will make the Sun go down at noon
and darken the Earth in broad daylight …
I will make it like the mourning for an only Son
and the end of it like a bitter day.”
(Amos 8:9,10)

 

He would be buried in a rich man’s grave

“He was buried like a criminal
in a rich man’s grave;” (Joseph of Arimathea)
(Isaiah 53:9)

 

He was innocent … without sin

“But He had done no wrong,
and He had never spoken an evil word.”
(Isaiah 53:9)

 

He would be Resurrected
before His body would start to decompose

“For You will not leave
my soul in Sheol (Hell),
NOR will You allow
Your Holy One (Messiah)
to see corruption (decompose).”
(Psalm 16:10)  (The body starts to decompose on the 4th day)

 

He would be a Savior to ALL Mankind …
Thus fulfilling the Abrahamic Covenant

“I will also give You
as a light to the Gentiles,
That You should be My Salvation
to the ends of the Earth.”
(Isaiah 49:6)

 

He would be The Sacrifice
for all of our sins

“And He bore the sin of many …”
(Isaiah 53:12)

 

The Cross was part of God’s Plan …
so we might be “saved” from our sins

“Yet it was the Lord’s good plan
to bruise Him; put Him to grief,
make His soul an offering for sin …”
(Isaiah 53:10, KJV paraphrased)

 

He would then return to His place in Heaven, until …

“I (the LORD) will return again to My place
until they (Israel) acknowledge their offense.
Then they will seek My face;
in their affliction (the Tribulation)
they will diligently seek Me”…
(Hosea 5:15)

 

For the LORD to return to His place means that He had to have left His place. One requirement that must be met before He can return to Earth is for the people of Israel to “acknowledge their offense.” (Notice that the word offense is singular, not plural, and it is specific.) This means that Israel must acknowledge their rejection of the Messiah and pray, as a nation, for His return. We are told this will be fulfilled at the very end of the Tribulation.

 

When the Word and prophecies became flesh …

“Now when they had fulfilled
all that was written concerning Him,
they took Him down from the tree
and laid Him in a tomb.
But God raised Him from the dead.
He was seen for many days
by those who came up with Him
from Galilee to Jerusalem,
who are His witnesses to the people.”
(Acts 13:29-31)

 

Then He (Jesus) said to them,
“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.”
And He opened their understanding,
that they might comprehend the Scriptures.
Then He said to them,
“Thus it is written,
and thus it was necessary
for the Christ (Messiah) to suffer
and to rise from the dead the third day,
and that repentance and remission of sins
should be preached in His Name
to all nations,
beginning at Jerusalem.”
(Luke 24:44-47)

 

The FIRST prophecy in the Bible was spoken by God to Adam, Eve, and Satan in the Garden of Eden …

“I will put enmity (hatred)
between you (Satan) and the woman (Eve),
And between your seed (the Antichrist)
and her Seed (the Christ);
He shall bruise your head,
and you shall bruise His heel.”
(Genesis 3:15)

 

This first prophecy is a prophecy of the Messiah. It also sets the stage for Satan’s hatred against mankind. In the book of Job, we find Satan attacks us and our families, bringing sickness, death, and distress into our lives to try to separate us from God … to “curse God and die.” Also, there are other prophecies found in the Bible concerning this prophetic “head” wound the coming “Antichrist” will sustain and appear to be “resurrected” from.

 

In this prophecy we are told the seed of the woman, the Messiah (the Christ), would have his heel bruised. If you study the physical trauma associated with Crucifixion, you soon find it was designed to cause extreme pain and torment before death. The word “excruciating” comes from the root word “crucify.” Crucifixion was a cruel, slow, agonizing, and tortuous form of execution designed to kill through slow suffocation. The shoulders of the person being crucified would dislocate and separate. The only way the person nailed to the Cross could breathe (or speak) would be to gather as much strength as they could and try to stand up on the nail or the spike that had been driven through their feet. The feet were severely bent forward and pressed together in order to nail them to the Cross. When the feet were nailed securely to the Cross, one heel would be pressed tightly against the wood of the Cross. So, in order to breathe or to speak, the person nailed to the Cross had to put all of their weight on the heel and the large spike that had been driven through the feet in order to stand up far enough to gasp for breath. This incredibly tortuous process would painfully bruise that heel. Also, we are told that Jesus was scourged by the Romans before He was crucified. These “stripes” He took on His back were another form of cruel punishment derived by the powers of the day. The Roman “whip” used for scourging was small with pieces of metal and bone attached. The prisoner’s back was stretched tight as He, in this case, Jesus, was tied to a post. The Roman whip was designed to dig into the skin of the back and then tear the skin away from the bone. By the time Jesus was crucified the skin of His back that had been torn from the “stripes” would have been hanging loosely off of the bone like a tattered cloth. Take a moment to consider the amount of pain shooting through the body of Christ as He struggled with dry, parched lips and gasping for breath to stand up by pressing down on that heel which was nailed to the Cross, causing His tattered back with its exposed bone to rub against the roughly hewn wood of His Cross in order to clearly speak those words ...”Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

 

Note to Christians: It is wrong and a blasphemy against God and Jesus to ever blame the Jews for Jesus’ death. As one pastor put it, “If you are going to blame anybody blame me, for it was because of my sins that the Messiah stepped forth from Eternity as the Son of Man … the Son of God, to suffer and die.

 

Christians are taught to help Israel and her people

“Cursed be everyone who curses you (Israel),
and blessed be those who bless you!”
(Genesis 27:29 & Genesis 12:3)

 

God has a covenant with Israel that will never be broken. He has revealed a destiny for Israel which will soon be completed.

God has declared a new Covenant (Jeremiah 31:31 – Matthew 26:28-32) and destiny for a people to be drawn from the whole world, through His Messiah, including the children of Israel who recognize their Messiah from Scripture. This new covenant is a promise for all who love, trust, and obey Him.

 

The Serpent on the Pole

 

We find another prophetic foreshadowing of the Cross in the book of Numbers, one of the five books of Moses …

“So the LORD
sent fiery serpents among the people,
and they bit the people;
and many of the people of Israel died.
Therefore the people came to Moses,
and said, ‘We have sinned,
for we have spoken against the LORD
and against you (Moses);
pray to the LORD that
He take away the serpents from us.’
So Moses prayed for the people.
Then the LORD said to Moses,
‘Make a fiery serpent, and set it on a pole;
and it shall be that everyone who is bitten,
when he looks at it, shall live.’

So Moses made a bronze serpent,
and put it on a pole;
and so it was,
if a serpent had bitten anyone,
when he LOOKED at the bronze serpent,
he LIVED.”
(Numbers 21:6-9)

 

In the Bible, the serpent is used as a symbol for “sin,” and bronze a symbol of “judgement,” because bronze could withstand the fire. We find in this verse that once the people acknowledged their sin, they only needed to look upon the serpent on the pole to be healed and saved. We are told Jesus “became” sin, like that “fiery serpent” on the pole, for us …

“For He made Him who knew no sin (Jesus Christ)
to be sin for us,
that we might become
the righteousness of God in Him.”
(2 Corinthians 5:21)

 

Jesus points to this prophetic model of the serpent on the pole …

Jesus said,
“And as Moses
lifted up the serpent in the wilderness,
even so must the Son of Man be lifted up,
that whoever believes in Him
should NOT perish (in Hell)
but have eternal life (in Heaven).
For God so loved the world
that He gave
His only begotten Son, (See Psalm 2)
that whoever believes in Him
should NOT perish (in Hell),
but have everlasting life (in Heaven).
For God did not send His Son
into the world to condemn the world,
but that the world through Him
might be saved.”
(From our sins and from Hell)
(John 3:14-17)

 

It is interesting that after hearing the story of the serpent in the wilderness, the ancient Greeks adopted this sign of the serpent on the pole as their symbol for healing. The symbol is still used by our medical profession. You might note there is only one serpent on this ancient symbol, not two.

 

So, as those who looked upon the fiery serpent in the wilderness were saved from their sins, so will all who trust and believe in Jesus on the Cross be saved … and welcomed into His Kingdom of Heaven, forever.

 

The Promise of the Cross is available to everybody. The offer is extended to all. The early church included all – Jew, Roman, Ethiopian, Greek, rich and poor, men and women, centurion and rabbi, together, as one. They saw … they heard … they believed.

 

God promised the good news of this new Covenant of God’s grace would be offered to all people around the world. Christ lovingly suffered and died for the sins of all Mankind!

 

And, finally, Jesus Christ IS God and the Word of God …

 

“In the Beginning was the Word
and the Word was WITH God,
and the Word WAS God.

And the Word became flesh
and dwelt among us,
and we beheld His glory,
the glory as of the only begotten
of the Father …
full of grace and truth.

He was in the world,
the World was made through Him,
and the World did not know Him.

He came to His own,
and His own did not receive Him”

(Excerpted from John 1:1-14)

 

 

Please Remember . . .

 

The Kingdom of Heaven is available to every man, woman, boy, and girl in this world, no matter who they are, where they live, or what they have done. It is freely offered to any and all who will receive it.

Jesus died rejected and alone on the Cross. The Bible, God’s Word, tells us that it was not the nails which were driven through His hands and feet that kept Jesus on the Cross, it was His love for you. He willingly and lovingly took the penalty and punishment for all of your sins. Each and every one of them, regardless how big or how small. Your debt, paid in full, by Him. Through God’s grace, you simply need to accept it and believe it. It is free to everybody. It is available to everybody. But, God has given each of us the free will to make our own choice. We must choose to accept it. We must choose to believe it.

If you sincerely believe Jesus (Yeshua) lovingly suffered and died on the Cross for all of your sins, and was buried and Resurrected on the third day and then ask Him to come into your life as Lord while honestly trying to turn away from all those things God says are wrong, you will go to Heaven. 

With open arms and with tears of joy He will receive all who will come to Him in faith and in love … it’s God’s Promise!!!