In this episode of Grace in Focus, dive deep into the essence of the Messianic thread that runs from Genesis to Revelation. Discover how prophecies like those in Psalm 110 and Micah illuminate Jesus’s role as the Messiah. As Bob Wilkin and Philippe Sterling meticulously discuss these intricate connections, they also highlight the intrinsic rewards of understanding these prophecies. Looking beyond the scriptures, this episode also invites its audience to reflect on personal faith and understanding. Whether through the lens of prophecy or personal growth, this rich dialogue explores themes of assurance, divine identity, and spiritual growth.
00:00:00 Introduction to Grace Evangelical Society
The following is a listener-supported ministry from the Grace Evangelical Society. There’s a Messianic thread running through Scripture. How can it benefit us to follow this thread? Hope you will stay tuned, friend, for the next few minutes. This is Grace in Focus, and it’s a ministry of the Grace Evangelical Society in North Texas. Our website is faithalone.org, and we’d love you to go there to find out more about us and especially about our national conference, which is coming up soon. It will be May the 19th through the 22nd this year, and it’s held at a camp in North Texas. Find out all of the details at our website, faithalone.org. And now, more about the Messianic Thread with Bob Wilkin and Philippe Sterling.
SPEAKER 03 :
All right. Well, Philippe, we’re going to be moving into talking about benefits of understanding and following this thread. But before we do, we had mentioned earlier John 5, 39 and 40, but we really didn’t go there. So let’s briefly touch on that. And that’s the verse where Jesus is talking to legalistic Jewish people and he’s talking to them about searching the scriptures. Why don’t you read that?
SPEAKER 02 :
Yes. And he addresses them saying, you search the scriptures forever. For in them you think you have everlasting life. And these are they which testify of me. But you are not willing to come to me that you may have life.”
SPEAKER 03 :
Now, these verses bother Calvinists because they don’t like to think of believing as a willingness, involving a willingness to believe. Notice that he doesn’t say belief is a choice, but he does say that unbelief can be a choice.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yes, unbelief is resisting and rejecting.
SPEAKER 03 :
But it’s interesting that he’s saying the scriptures, referring to the books of the Old Testament, Are they which testify of me? And so they were searching the scriptures, looking at the big commandments and thinking, well, as long as I’m a good Jew, I’m going to make it right.
SPEAKER 02 :
So that’s why that question, what’s the greatest commandment? That’s why they kept asking that, right? Right. So what’s the one thing I can do that will guarantee that? To justify themselves, right?
SPEAKER 03 :
Give them assurance, which… By the way, in the church age, we have the same problem. People are looking to their works for assurance. And Jesus is like, no, no, you don’t look to your works for assurance. You look to me for assurance. The scriptures tell you about me, and he’s the one that promises everlasting life to those who believe in him. And so he’s saying, but you’re not willing to come to me. And coming to Jesus in John’s gospel is a figure for believing in him, like John 6, 35. Right.
SPEAKER 02 :
And so here, I think maybe a clear indication that the scriptures get all the Old Testament scriptures pointing to Christ and to the matter of life, of everlasting life. So they are clearly indicators or intimations of that matter, you know, to the Old Testament scripture.
SPEAKER 03 :
But here’s another thing. If you were present there and he made this comment and you were one of the Jewish people, that wasn’t at that point willing to come to him, wouldn’t you at the very least say, what scriptures? What scriptures testify of you? Give me one. Give me two. I’m open.
SPEAKER 02 :
If they were seeking.
SPEAKER 03 :
I may not be much open, but I’m a little bit open, you know. But they weren’t seeking. So they didn’t say, hey, show us that. Explain it. But wouldn’t that have been great to ask God? The Lord God Almighty in front of you. Hey, could you explain that? Then you’d have like what happened in Luke 24, assuming he was going to do it, which he may not have been willing to do it because these people weren’t willing. If they ask, they probably would have been done so in a mocking way.
SPEAKER 02 :
Of course, we have an example of one who was open, and that was Nicodemus. Yes. As we look at John chapter 3, even though Jesus kind of gives him a mild rebuke saying, you know, you’re a teacher of Israel and you don’t know this about certainly the new birth and the kingdom. Right.
SPEAKER 03 :
Right. He was one of the preeminent Jewish scholars, and yet he didn’t get it. All right. So very good. And then we briefly touched on the fact that there are a number of indicators of the messianic threat. We talked about direct prophecies. You said there were between like 300 and 375 prophecies.
SPEAKER 02 :
Generally, when we see such as Micah, you know, talking about that his birth will be in Bethlehem. And of course, in Matthew, when the Magi come and ask, you know, where is he who is to be born king of the Jews? And the Jews clearly says, oh, Bethlehem. It’s Bethlehem. Right. Which is a small, small city.
SPEAKER 03 :
So we’re not thinking, okay, he’s going to be born in Jerusalem. He’s going to be born in Los Angeles or Tokyo or Mexico City. No, he’s going to be born in some little obscure town, right?
SPEAKER 02 :
Yes.
SPEAKER 03 :
And so that greatly limited who the Messiah could be. And, of course, he had to be born in the fullness of time, Galatians 4.4. So it had to be during this precise time and it had to fulfill all kinds of other.
SPEAKER 02 :
Right. And then Galatians 4.4 fulfills prophecy about the seed of the woman. You know, he will be born of a woman. It says, and not a clear statement, but an indicator of virgin conception as well.
SPEAKER 03 :
Right. So we have direct prophecies. We also talked about indirect prophecies, some of which were like types, Abraham offering up Isaac or the serpent, the bronze serpent being lifted up. So we have various indirect prophecies as well, right?
SPEAKER 02 :
Yes. And then we have prophecies that are by the New Testament writers clearly said to be speaking of Christ and to be that messianic thread.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, by the way, that brings up one other point. I wanted to ask you about this. I’ve often heard it said that there are places in the New Testament that refer to Old Testament texts and say that’s referring to Jesus. And yet the Old Testament text used the word Yahweh. Yes. And so the New Testament sometimes identifies Jesus as Yahweh of the Old Testament. Doesn’t mean every reference to Yahweh in the Old Testament referred to the second member of the Trinity, but some did, right? Yes.
SPEAKER 01 :
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SPEAKER 02 :
David, I think it’s Psalm 110, says, The Lord said to my Lord. So the first Lord is Yahweh. The second Lord is what, Adonai? Is Adonai. And so it’s talking about, you know, who is David talking about there? So sometimes Yahweh is distinct, you know, from the… There is a distinction between the persons of the Godhead that is made. So Yahweh sometimes can refer, I think, to the Father, but at other times to one different from the Father, yet equal with the Father, who is also Yahweh, too, but sometimes Adonai, too, and sometimes the Almighty, too.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, you even have this reference in Daniel 7 where the Son of Man comes up to the Ancient of Days.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yes.
SPEAKER 03 :
And Jesus often referred to himself as the Son of Man. A lot of people think of that meaning he’s human, but probably Son of Man goes back to Daniel, doesn’t he?
SPEAKER 02 :
Oh, yes. And to the matter of the rulership that is given to him over all the nations. And that may be looking, that scene even might be more of like the scene that is in Revelation 5 about the Lion of Judah and the Lamb. Right. And all, you know, that is fulfilled there. So then as we follow the thread to see how it’s all connected, not just Genesis to Malachi, but of course, all through the New Testament into the book of Revelation, you know. Fantastic.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, let’s begin talking about some of the benefits of following the Messianic thread. What benefits are there to those of us who love Jesus and we’re following him, we’re seeking to please him? What benefit is there to us to grasping this thread throughout the Old Testament and understanding it and applying it? What are the benefits?
SPEAKER 02 :
There are several, you know, one of them is just it helps to confirm Jesus’s identity. First of all, you know, to be clearly recognized, you know, that he is the promised seed of the woman to understand the whole matter of his suffering. Even as Psalm 22, you know, goes to, and Isaiah 53 and all. And when we connect even the direct statements about his birth and other aspects, that confirmation is reassuring, you know, that we see it all the way.
SPEAKER 03 :
And that also produces… A sense of awe, doesn’t it? I mean, it makes us love Him more.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yes, yes. You know, seeing the glory, the fact that He is God, you know, God in the flesh, you know, who came. And then as we follow that thread, you know, all the way through, I think it does help to overall deepen our understanding of the message and of the unity of God. of the Bible and its inspiration and the confidence that we can have that this is the truth, you know, and it all always comes back to Jesus.
SPEAKER 03 :
Amen. That makes a lot of sense. Because if we love Jesus, we also love His Word. And our appreciation for His Word grows the more we see it’s interconnected.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yes. And it talks about, for us, the unity of Scripture. And again, it’s inspiration. You know, there’s the old observation, you know, that we have in here, you know, a collection, a book, you know, that was written over 1,400 periods of years. Or more. Or more. Because we don’t know exactly when Job was written.
SPEAKER 03 :
Job could have been 2000 B.C.
SPEAKER 02 :
Right, right. But we don’t know, right? There’s 40 different authors in three different languages. Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic. on three different continents, we might say. And yet there’s this unifying message and consistent thread that is there all the way through. So our trust and reliance and then commitment to study this book, but not just for its own sake, as we read earlier, that the Jewish leaders were doing, but because of the person that it all points to and deals with and all, And in so doing, I think it also then strengthens our faith, our hope, our love, you know, for him.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, I mean, it seems to me the more we grasp the beauty of Scripture, we also grasp the beauty of the Lord. Yes. Because the scriptures are his communication to us. That’s why we call it the word of God. Right.
SPEAKER 02 :
And then we tie that into just the whole sanctification process for us. You know, as we see him in the scripture, I think we can look at 2 Corinthians 3.18. Yes. That we do behold him as in the mirror. The glory of the Lord. The glory of the Lord. And that has a transforming effect. 2 Peter 3.18. Is it 2 Peter 3.18? Yeah, 3.18.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, Zane Hodges makes a lot of that in his book, Six Secrets of the Christian Life. That’s one of his, along with Romans 12 too. He loves those two passages, but I do too. Well, thanks so much, Philippe. Again, time flies when we’re talking about this subject. We plan to go through this faster, but it doesn’t happen because there’s so much here. Well, thanks so much, and let’s all keep grace in focus.
SPEAKER 01 :
Read many from our library of thousands of free magazine and journal articles online at faithalone.org slash resources. That’s faithalone.org. Did you miss an episode of Grace in Focus that you really wanted to hear? Just come to faithalone.org. That’s faithalone.org. We have all our past episodes right there on the site. Our team is really great about answering questions, comments, and feedback. If you’ve got some, we hope to hear from you. Let me give you our email address so you can do just that. It’s radio at faithalone.org. That’s radio at faithalone.org. Thank you for listening today. We hope you have a great weekend. Fellowship at a Bible-believing church with other believers. Come back and join us again on Monday, and until then, let’s keep grace in focus.
