Pray with me, please. Gracious and loving Father, Lord,
we pray that you would be gracious to us in Christ today. We pray
that you might use your Word, use your ancient prophecies of
Christ to show us Christ and the nature of Christ, that sinners
might be persuaded concerning Christ. Lord, you've called me
to preach your Gospel. But Lord, I am unable to preach
it with my own power. And so I pray that you might
use me to accomplish that which you have called me to do. I pray
that you would make your word powerful in the hearts of your
people for their comfort, their salvation of their souls. May
you be glorified, dear Father, in Christ, who came to die for
the sins of your people. And may your people today be
persuaded that Christ came to die for them in a very personal
way. In Jesus' name I pray, Amen. Open your Bibles again please
to Acts chapter 28 and verse 23. One of the most decisive
and infallible evidences of the truth of what we believe comes
from the books of the prophets in the Old Testament. Those holy
men of God wrote about the future kingdom of the Messiah with such
precision, with such detail, that it fills our minds with
astonishment when we discover that their prophecies or their
predictions were completely accurate in every detail. Paul saw that
too when he used the truth of this, the accuracy of God's prophecy,
as it was given to men, to try and persuade men concerning Christ.
In Acts 28, verse 23, it's talking about the Apostle Paul and how
he preached the gospel of Jesus Christ. It says, And when they
had appointed him a day, there came many to him into his lodging,
to whom he expounded and testified the kingdom of God, persuading
them concerning Jesus, both out of the law of Moses and out of
the prophets, from morning till night. Should I preach all the
way, don't I? In other words, Paul preached
the gospel from God's words to persuade them about Jesus. The prophecies of the prophets
of God were delivered from God long before they came true. And
what was prophesied was so altogether improbable when it was prophesied,
improbable according to human ideas, that we can't honestly
attribute those prophecies as coming from the foresight or
from the imaginations of men at all. The prophecies in Scripture
had to come from God. Men couldn't be so completely
accurate about the future if these prophecies had come from
their own minds. Nor can an honest person reasonably
claim that these predictions were written after these events
that were prophesied, after they actually happened. Because the
historical and the archaeological evidence all says otherwise. Turn please to Revelation 19
in verse 10. Now the astonishing accuracy
and even the very existence of biblical prophecy can only be
accounted for because it came from the powerful and immediate
inspiration of Almighty God. Prophecy is God telling us what
He's going to do before He does it. And so, like all Scripture, it's the Word of God. And because
God is in sovereign control of all things, He is able to accomplish
and to do everything just exactly as He said it was going to happen.
He'll do according to His own will in all things. If any of
the prophecies of God didn't come true, if they didn't come
true exactly as God said that they would happen, then God wouldn't
be God, and you couldn't trust God's prophecy, you couldn't
trust God's Word for anything. But you can trust God's Word. Everything that God said came
true. And so biblical prophecy, the
fact that it all happened just exactly as God said that it was
going to happen, stamps the strongest seal of truth on what God says
and the cause to which it's intended to bear evidence. Because as
the last phrase of Revelation 19.10 says, and it's an interesting
verse, and the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. And so we look into these inspired
writings of prophecy today with the purpose of using them to
persuade men to persuade you concerning Jesus, both out of
the law of Moses and out of the prophets. And then the important
question for you to ask, I think, is this. What characteristics
were the Jews taught by their prophets that we can expect the
promised Messiah to have? What were the specific marks
going to be which identified Christ or the Messiah's person
in offices? The answer to that question,
I think, will teach us of Christ. You know, I'm sure, that the
words Messiah and Christ have the same meaning in each of two
languages. The Hebrew word Messiah means
the Anointed One. And when the Anointed One is
translated into Greek, as the New Testament is written, it
becomes Christos or, being anglicized, In the King James Version, it
is Christ. Christ, who is the Anointed One
of God. You might well imagine that the
appearance of such a significant being into this world as the
one who was anointed by God to come with a grand mission of
saving or restoring a fallen race, you might imagine that
he must have had some very striking and prominent features by which
he would be known. And if the Holy Spirit of God
thought that it was important enough to typify and to predict
Christ's coming and his purpose for coming with many revelations
through a long course of history, then it is only reasonable to
suppose also that those types and prophecies must have particularly
foreshadowed the outlines of Christ's person and his character. Learning about Jesus is important
to God's people. And that's what I pray God will
do today. teach us of Jesus Christ. Oh, dear Father, we pray that
you would teach us of Christ this very morning. So this morning,
in an attempt to persuade you concerning Christ Jesus, let's
search the sacred scripture once more for information which was
revealed by God to his prophets about the person and character
of the Messiah. Let's see if we can find in prophecy
a description of the individual characteristics of Christ which
the scriptures of the prophets taught mankind to look for in
the great Savior of the world that God said he was going to
send and which has come. I don't need to deal with it
here because it's well known but the prospect of a Messiah
coming was the leading principle of the Jewish religion. The Jews
were looking for the Messiah to come All through the many
intermediate ages from the promise of this deliverer until he actually
appeared, the minds of men were continually occupied with the
expectation of this auspicious event. And I remind you that
the first time God gave a prophecy of a savior was when he was in
the garden with Adam and Eve as he showed them a picture of
Jesus Christ. in the sacrifice of a lamb to
cover their naked bodies. Christ has always been of great
interest to men, not only because he would come from God, but because
God had promised that the Messiah would come to save sinners from
their sin. Whether you know it or not, sin
is man's biggest problem. Everything ceremonial in the
religion of the Jews, for the most part, was typical or figurative
of Christ as the prophet, the priest and king, that prophet,
priest, and king who would come to save his people from their
sin. I don't have time to show you every prophecy in Scripture
that God revealed about the coming Messiah, because as Jesus said
himself, Moses wrote of me. The Bible is all about Jesus
Christ. But this morning I do want to
show you those things which I pray God will use to show us who the
prophet said the Messiah would be and what he would do and by
which Jesus of Nazareth identified his claim to that character as
being the savior of his people. Nearly everyone has agreed that
Jesus was born in Bethlehem. He was born out of the lineage
of David. So we won't spend much time on these kinds of prophecies
except to say that they all go to show us that Jesus was the
Christ, the Messiah of God. That Jesus was born and where
he was born. All Christians of every denomination
and even many who would not call themselves Christians believe
these things. Christians seem to be aggrieved where Christ
was born and approximately when he was born, so it's needless
for us to dwell on. But the very important objective
that God has given me isn't to convince you that Jesus Christ
was born. My job that God has given me is not to persuade you
if possible, but my job is to persuade you if possible that
Jesus Christ was God who came to save his people from their
sin. And this was the real character of the promised Messiah according
to the language of prophecy. So we won't look at those prophecies
of Christ that don't seem to illustrate this truth. that Christ
is God's only provision for the salvation of sinners. Among the
writings of the inspired prophets of God, we find the Messiah so
carefully described under one or another of his offices as
prophet, priest, and king that an attentive mind can't help
but be impressed when he is shown the wonderful vein of prophecy
which runs through all of the works of the prophets. Some prophecies
are so plain, they're very plain, so obviously about Christ that
even an ordinary reader of scripture who considers them in a prophetic
sense must be instantly led to make an application of them to
the person of our blessed Lord. But others, however, other prophecies
are more hidden. They're more obscure so that
we would not be able with any precision or certainty to have
known Christ by them if the apostles and their expositions of those
scriptures under the assistance of the Holy Spirit of God had
not pointed out their meaning to us. And of course, we can
never understand anything about Christ without the Holy Spirit
being our teacher. But those who have the leisure,
those who have the ability to go through the whole of the prophecies
on this important subject of the accurate prediction of the
character and person of Christ, will find enough to excite their
admiration and to confirm their conviction that God sent Jesus
Christ to save sinners from their sin. And I pray God will enable
me to show you exactly that today. So this morning, I'm necessarily
limited to a few selections of scripture only. And out of these,
the first place is due in priority of time to the predictions of
the prophet David, and I call David a prophet. David speaks
to us the Word of God. David speaks to us often about
Christ in his book of the Psalms, telling us many details of Christ's
incarnation and his sufferings and his death. And finally, he
speaks to us of Christ's exaltation at the right hand of the power
of God. It would extend us way beyond
our time to deal with all of those prophecies and all of those
Psalms. But if the Second Psalm can be
supposed to have any prophetic meaning, then nothing can be
more to the purpose and proof of the divinity of Him to whom
it is applicable. The Anointed of the Lord is said
in the Second Psalm to be the King of Zion, the Son of God,
whose inheritance was to be over the heathen, and His possessions
were said to extend to all the kingdoms of the world. And similar
to the second psalm is the 89th psalm where we find the same
person predicted to come with the title of the holy one and
the one that is mighty and he is declared to be God's firstborn
higher than the kings of the earth and the Holy Spirit wasn't
speaking about David himself in either of these psalms but
he's speaking about David as a type or a picture of the Messiah. That's evident both from the
expressions that are used in the psalm and by the characteristics
by which Christ is distinguished. Because even King David in his
highest glory couldn't be called the Holy One or the Mighty, nor
could David possibly possess those properties which are ascribed
to the King of Zion. Nor indeed did the ancient Jews
ever consider these characteristics as being applicable to David,
or to anyone else for that matter. But they're expected to deliver
the Messiah of God was who they understood David to be talking
about. But if we had any doubts at all
remaining about who the Spirit of God was talking about in these
Psalms, then the Holy Spirit would have the Apostle Paul and
John remove those doubts from our minds. Because Paul calls
Christ the firstborn of every creature in Colossians 115. And
John calls Christ the King of Kings and Lord of Lords in Revelation
19.16. Do you remember the last Passover
when Jesus came into Jerusalem, heralded by all of the people?
He comes in riding on a colt. The children sang songs of triumph
before our Lord as He entered into Jerusalem, which Psalm 8,
verses 1 and 2 predicted. David wrote, O Lord, our Lord,
How excellent is thy name in all the earth, who has set thy
glory above the heavens. Out of the mouth of babes, out
of those cheering crowds of children and sucklings hast thou ordained
strength because of thine enemies, that thou mightest still the
enemy and the avenger. That verse also predicts Christ
conquering death and Satan. which Christ was about to do
as He went to die on the cross in just a few days after He entered
into Jerusalem. And Psalm 2 and 69 also tell
us of our Savior's persecutions by the princes of the earth.
Psalm 2, verses 1 and 2 ask, Why do the heathen rage and the
people imagine a vain thing? The King of the earth The kings
of the earth set themselves and the rulers take counsel together
against the Lord and against his anointed, saying, Let us
break their bands asunder and cast away their courts from us.
And Psalm 69 is filled with verses that describe the persecution
of Christ even on the cross, such as verse 21, which says,
They gave me also gall for my meat, and in my thirst they gave
me vinegar to drink. Many of the Psalms tell us about
Christ. They tell us about Christ's death on the cross for the sins
of his people. But maybe the most clearly prophetic
psalm of Christ's crucifixion and the death for the sins of
his people is Psalm 22. Psalm 22 contains many of the
words of Christ which were spoken from the cross as he suffered
and died. It prophesies that the soldiers would pierce Christ's
side, part his garments, and cast lots for his vesture. These
things are all meticulously described in the 31 verses of prophecy
of Christ's sacrificial death in Psalm 22. All of these details
and many more, which we find in the inspired writings of David
as a prophet, are either by our Lord himself or by his apostles.
They're declared to be referring to Jesus Christ and they clearly
imply and predict a superiority of Christ's nature. They tell
us that Christ is not just a man, but he is God, God who came to
die for the sins of his people. But above all, the resurrection
of Jesus Christ from the dead, his ascension into heaven, and
his possession of an eternal throne, sitting at the right
hand of the power of God, should be overwhelmingly convincing
that Jesus Christ was the Son of God who came to die and who
did die for the sins of his people. And yet he was raised, he was
raised from the dead to sit at the right hand of the power of
God. Turn please to Psalm 49 and verses 6 to 9. These are such clear predictions
that when they're explained by the corresponding events that
they predict, it leaves us no room to doubt that the Godhead
of that person to whom they refer and in whom they were all accomplished
was Jesus Christ, God, God himself who came to save his people. As Psalm 49, verses 6 to 9 says
about Christ and His enemies, that they that trust in their
wealth and boast themselves in the multitude of their riches,
none of them, none of Christ's enemies, can by any means redeem
his brother, nor give to God a ransom for him. For the redemption
of their souls is precious and it ceases forever. That he, that
Christ, should still live forever and not see corruption. when
we hear the prophet in Psalm 49 declaring the impossibility
of the Messiah ever seeing corruption and then we find the Apostle
Peter applying this prophecy so clearly to Christ in his first
sermon that after the descent of the Holy Ghost on the day
of Pentecost how can anyone not be persuaded that Jesus Christ
was sent by God to save his people from their sin just as the angel
said thou shall call his name Jesus for he shall save his people
from their sins. When we again read the magnificent
description in Psalm 68 verse 18 that the prophet was given
of Christ ascending up on high leading captivity captive and
receiving gifts for men and then we see the whole prophecy verified
in the day of our Lord's ascension and his sending down the gifts
of his Holy Spirit on his followers at the Feast of Pentecost. Surely
that should persuade anyone concerning Jesus Christ that he is the God
come to save his people. And when the prophet says about
Christ in Psalm 45 verse 6, Thy throne, O God, is forever and
ever, the scepter of thy kingdom is a right scepter. And then
when these same words are quoted in Hebrews 1 verse 8 by such
an infallible expositor as the Holy Spirit, who can't be mistaken
and who without hesitation applied them to Christ Jesus, whom he
calls in Hebrews 1.3, God's eternal son, the brightness of his glory
and the express image of his person and upholding all things
by the word of his power. And when he had by himself purged
our sins, sat down on the right hand of the majesty on high.
Then I would ask anyone, anyone who is reasonably intelligent
in their mind, What possible ideas can you raise out of your
own mind to suggest that these qualities of Christ could be
anything but those qualities which are divine? And therefore,
what less than a divine being could the prophet have meant
to predict when he prophesied of the coming of Messiah, the
coming of Jesus Christ to save his people from their sin? But
we are by no means limited to the Psalms of David, for prophecy
about Jesus Christ and who he was and what he did. Let's move
on to one of my favorite prophets, who is Isaiah. Isaiah, who from
the great variety of events, as well as from the details that
he has given us about Christ our Savior, is called by Robert
Hawker, the evangelical prophet. And I think that's a good name
for Isaiah, don't you? The evangelical prophet. So wonderful
indeed are the writings of this prophet Isaiah on the subject
of Christ's person and offices that the most striking scenes
of our Lord's Passion are described by Isaiah with the same truth
and exactness as if he had been there on the spot writing them. But Isaiah wrote them long before
they happened. as archaeological evidence of
the Dead Sea Scrolls proves, and of course, that could only
mean that Isaiah wrote them by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit
of God. No man could predict the future so accurately as Isaiah
did, and thus God had given it to him by inspiration. In Isaiah
7, verse 14, the prophet Isaiah begins his description of the
person of the future Messiah by predicting his miraculous
conception. Behold, Isaiah says, a virgin
shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name Emmanuel. An angel has testified about
Jesus applying this prophecy to the person of Jesus Christ
and an apostle has recorded the fact itself as being accomplished.
In Matthew 1 verse 22 he says, all this was done that it might
be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophets.
And in another chapter, Isaiah again foretells of the birth
of the Messiah by ascribing to him such additional marks of
divinity that you would think that they would impress the minds
of even unbelievers with the fullest conviction of the greatness
of Christ's character. Unto us, Isaiah 9.6 says, a child
is born. Unto us a son is given, and the
government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall
be called Wonderful, Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting
Father, the Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government
and peace, there shall be no end. That's a great group of
attributes of Christ that are all lumped together in one verse,
isn't it? all talking about the divinity
of Christ. That's being shown to us by the
Holy Spirit as God speaks through the mouth of Isaiah. Although
I believe there's not a single perfection belonging to the Father,
but in one part or another of sacred Scripture, it is equally
applied to the Son. Yet in this verse, the incommunicable
characters of the Godhead shine out like a bright light, like
a full constellation in the sky. In Ephesians 1.23, the inspired
writer seems to search for words to describe the fullness of Him
who filleth all in all. How could the prophet be so daring
and so presumptuous as to describe the Messiah with such great and
eternal properties, if, after all, no more than a mere man
was expected to come? Would Paul have said this about
anyone else, even of the highest and greatest of all created beings?
Could such attributes in the smallest degree be equitable
to anyone else than the great supreme God of all creation?
And what then were the expectations of the Jews from the predictions
of Isaiah of the character of their expected Messiah? The same
prophet in Isaiah 40 verse 3, after having listed for us those
wonderful characteristics of the nature of the Messiah, he
then goes on to mention other details which are also descriptive
of Christ's person and character. In Isaiah 40, verse 3, the prophet
tells us that there will be a herald, a forerunner, who would usher
in the Messiah's approach. And in verse 9, Isaiah gives
us the name and the title by which this forerunner would be
proclaimed, the manner of his appearance, and the great events
by which his life would be distinguished. Isaiah describes John the Baptist
as the voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare ye the
way of the Lord, Make straight in the desert a highway for our
God. He says in Isaiah 40 verse 9,
Lift up thy voice, be not afraid. Say unto the cities of Judah,
Behold your God. And then he says in Isaiah 35
verse 4, Behold your God will come and save you. Then the eyes
of the blind shall be opened and the ears of the deaf shall
be unstopped. Then shall the lame man leap
as a heart and the tongue of the dumb shall sing. I pray that
you can look at those descriptions of Christ, those descriptions
that Isaiah is making here. I pray that you can see them
with spiritual eyes, eyes that God has given you to see, and
then turn to the evangelist's history of the life of Jesus
and see that this is exactly what Isaiah said that the coming
Messiah would do. Only God could predict such events,
and only the Son of God could do them. Surely Jesus was the
Christ, the anointed Son of God. Did you hear what the prophet
said? Isaiah said that it was their God who was to come and
to save them. And this is when He was going
to come. This is how you would recognize Him. When the eyes
of the blind were opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped.
And then I pray that you will see with a believing heart that
it was the blessed Redeemer of men who went about the streets
of Jerusalem continually performing these gracious works of mercy.
And Christ referred the messengers of John the Baptist to those
works that he had done as proofs that he was the Messiah that
Isaiah had predicted. But if that isn't enough, then
ask yourself what stronger proofs do you need before you'll accept
the divinity of this person, Jesus Christ, by whom all these
miraculous works are done. Are these proofs? the prophecies
of them, the working of them, not enough for you to also believe
that Jesus Christ is able to save to the uttermost them that
believe on him? But I'll not quit so quickly.
I'll not stop so easily in my attempts to persuade you concerning
Christ and that Christ came to die for sinners to save them
from their sin. If David and Isaiah are not enough,
let me tell you about Jeremiah. In Jeremiah 23, verse 6, it tells
us that this prophet taught the Jews to look for a divine person
who would be their expected deliverer. He was telling them to look for
a holy person when he declared that the name by which the Messiah
would be known was the incommunicable name of the great Jehovah. This
is the name, Jeremiah says, whereby he shall be called the Lord our
righteousness. Oh, what a wonderful name for
sinners that is. to look to the Lord our righteousness. Now what
sort of a person, except one who was divine, could the prophet
Daniel be expecting when he describes the Messiah in Daniel 7.13 as
the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven, and to whom
there was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, and whom
all people and nations should serve, whose dominion was to
be an everlasting dominion. This prophet also, in a very
particular manner, declares the precise time of the Messiah's
appearing and of his being cut off, or being crucified in other
words, together with the great end of his sacrificial merits
and death, all of which were literally fulfilled according
to his predictions in the person of Christ. But I mention these
things only as additional proofs among many that refer to Christ
Jesus as the Son of God who came to die, who came to save his
people from their sins. In Micah 5 verse 2, the prophet
has also clearly defined the person and character of our Lord
as being divine. So clearly that in that Micah
points to the very spot which was to give birth to the Redeemer
so that no one who admits this prediction is a reference to
Jesus Christ can hesitate to believe also that Micah is describing
deity to Christ. Listen to what Micah said. He
said, Thou Bethlehem Ephrathah, though thou be little among the
thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto
me, that is, to be the ruler in Israel, whose goings forth
have been from of old, from everlasting. And then in verse 4, Micah says,
And he, the Son of God, shall stand and feed in the strength
of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God,
and they shall abide, for now shall be great under the ends
of the earth. The testimony of Matthew 2 verses
5 and 6 confirms that Micah is talking about the coming Messiah.
It says in Bethlehem of Judea for thus it is written by the
prophets and thou Bethlehem in the land of Judea of Judah are
not the least among the princes of Judah for out of thee shall
come a governor that shall rule my people Israel. And in John
7 verse 42 the Apostle also confirmed that he asked Has not the scripture
said that Christ, or the Messiah, that Christ cometh of the seed
of David and out of the town of Bethlehem where David was?
And so clearly, the Messiah that the Jews were taught to look
for was a divine being who had an eternal nature, whose goings
forth have been from of old and from everlasting, And if Haggai
means anything by his remarkable prophecy in Haggai 2, verses
6 to 9, that the glory of the latter house shall be greater
than the former, then it could only be derived from the divinity
of his presence who appeared in it during his incarnation. It was in the temple of Jerusalem
that Christ went to preach of his salvation. But that first
temple was inferior to the second. Because we read in scripture
that the second temple was so far inferior to the first that
many of the priests and chiefs of the fathers, who were ancient
men, who had seen the first house when the foundation of the second
was laid before their eyes, they wept with a loud voice. Jesus
Christ is the first temple of God, and we worship God only. in Christ, Christ who is the
temple of God. We in the church form the body
of the church which is the temple of God. But Zacharias 2 verses
10 and 11 gives us an even clearer description of the divinity of
the expected Messiah. Jesus Christ who was the spirit
of prophecy speaking through Zacharias says to his church
Sing and rejoice, O daughter of Zion. For lo, I come, and
I will dwell in the midst of thee, saith the Lord. And many
nations shall be joined to the Lord in that day, and shall be
my people. And thou shalt know that the
Lord of hosts has sent me unto thee." Only God could speak like
this. Only God could speak through
his prophet, Zechariah. Using the mouth of Zechariah,
the Lord calls himself the Lord who is sent by the Lord of hosts.
The Lord of Hosts is the incommunicable name of Jehovah, which is equally
applied to both the Father and to the Son. But to express this
still even more clearly, in Zechariah 13, 7, the Lord, who is still
using the mouth of Zechariah, the Lord says, Awake, O sword,
against my shepherd, and against the man that is my fellow, saith
the Lord of Hosts. Smite the shepherd, and the sheep
shall be scattered. Our Lord Himself, through the
mouth of Zachariah has so clearly explained this prophecy that
the sense and application of it can't be doubted. And what
then shall we conclude his nature to have been who is called fellow
to the Lord of hosts? We have to conclude that the
Lord is the Lord Jesus Christ, the shepherd of the sheep who
died to save his people from their sin. Did you notice that
the sheep shall be scattered And isn't that what happened
at the crucifixion of Christ? There are many more prophecies
that we could look at which show us that Jesus Christ is God who
came to save his people from their sin. But sincere inquirers
who are concerned about their sin and who know their need for
a Savior, will, I pray, review the evidence that comes from
the predictions of the prophets. They'll review them coolly and
impartially. And if you'll do that, that the
Lord of hosts will be gracious to us then the true character
of the great Deliverer Israel will appear. That is the work
of the Holy Spirit. That is what is needed if you
are to see Christ as your Savior. Although it was said of Christ
in prophecy that he should be a prince which should reign over
all and that of his kingdom there should be no end. Although it
was said that the Gentiles were to come to his light and kings
to the brightness of his rising, Yet the prophets also said that
this lord of his temple was to be a man of sorrows and acquainted
with grief. He was to pour out his soul unto
death. He was to give his back to the
smiters and his cheeks to them that plucked off the hair. So
that when we saw him, there was nothing about him that we should
desire him. His visage was so marred more than any man and
his form more than sons of men. He was to be wounded for our
transgressions and bruised for our iniquities. He was to be
led as a lamb to the slaughter, to be taken from prison and from
judgment, and to be cut off out of the land of the living. Jesus
Christ came to die for the sins of His people. Oh, dear Father,
would you enable us to see that ever more clearly? Jesus Christ
came to die for the sins of His people. It's true that the prophecies
of Christ seem to be contradictory to many people. They require
something more than human understanding to be understood. Most of the
ancient Jews were unable to understand and to reconcile the contradictions
of the prophecies concerning Christ. Even today, most people
have universally rejected the idea of a suffering Messiah and
have been unable to accept that salvation is only in Christ.
But their ignorance and their perpetual perversion of the scriptures
shouldn't prevent more enlightened minds, especially when they are
enlightened by the Holy Spirit of God, from seeing things in
a different point of view. As God has enabled me, I have
tried to preach and persuade you concerning Jesus. The scriptures that I have shown
you, I believe, reveal that Messiah was to be Emmanuel, God with
us, and no less a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. He
was God who came to save his people from their sin. If you
know that you're a sinner, if you know that you're a sinner,
then I am here to tell you that Jesus Christ died for sinners.
God became a man to die for the sins of his people. While we
glory in the gracious plan of the redemption by Christ, that
the Lord laid help upon one that is mighty and sent his Son to
be the Savior of the world, it is our peculiar joy also and
the consolation of our hearts that this blessed Redeemer, when
he came, took not upon him the nature of angels, but was made
like to us in all things, yet without sin. that he might be
a merciful and a faithful priest in things pertaining to God,
to make reconciliation for the sins of his people. For we have
not a high priest which cannot be touched with the feelings
of our infirmities, but was at all points tempted like as we
are, and yet without sin. I don't know whether or not I
persuaded you concerning Christ. I know that in my own power I
can't persuade you. Only the Holy Spirit can do that.
But I pray fervently that the Holy Spirit of God has opened
your eyes to see the sovereign deity of Christ, the Son of God
who came to die for the sins of his people. And I pray also,
just as fervently, that you will look to Christ and by God's grace
you will see and believe that Christ died for your sin. I pray
that by God's grace you will trust Christ. You'll trust nothing
but Christ to take away your sin. That's why Christ came. God came, became a man, to die
for the sins of His people, and all who come to Him shall be
saved. In Jesus' name I pray. I pray
that it would be so with you. Amen.