The Most Powerful Messianic Prophecy in the Bible - Life of Paul Part 59

Turn in your Bibles, if you brought one, to Acts chapter 18. I don't know if you have movies that you love so much, you can watch the same one over and over again. I mean, you know it so well, you know the lines before they say them. You can sit there and say what the characters are going to say.

Well, I have a few of those and one of my favorite movies is one called A Few Good Men and for those of you who don't know the plot, let me tell you what it is. A young Navy lawyer, Tom Cruise, is assigned to a case to defend two Marines accused of murdering a fellow Marine down at Guantanamo. But as Tom Cruise gets into this, he begins to discover that really what happened was not a murder at all.

It was an accident that occurred during a hazing incident called a Code Red. Moreover, he begins to suspect that the Code Red was actually ordered by the commander of the base, Colonel Nathan Jessup, a fellow played by the indomitable Jack Nicholson. Well, one of the most compelling scenes in the movie is where Tom Cruise has his legal team who are all defending these two Marines around him. And with great passion and with great conviction, he's reconstructing the way it really went, putting all the pieces together, explaining why their clients are guilty and why Colonel Jessup, their clients are innocent rather, and Colonel Jessup is guilty.

And while he's doing this, one of the lawyers on his team, Demi Moore, speaks up in great lawyerly fashion and she says to him, there's only one problem with your theory. She said, you've got to be able to prove it in a court of law. Do you have any proof? Now, you know, as Americans, this concept that in order to validate something as true, we need empirical proof. We need verifiable proof, the kind of proof that we could take into a courtroom and have a courtroom say, yes, that's right. This concept runs very deep and true with us as Americans. And you know, as Americans, we don't apply this concept just to scientific truth, mathematical truth, computer truth or medical truth, but we as Americans also bring this concept to bear on religious truth, on spiritual truth. How many times have you been out trying to share Jesus with somebody and people, because this has happened to me a lot, push back and say, hey, you know what? You prove to me that Jesus is the Messiah, that He's who He's claimed to be, and then I'll believe.

I want proof. And you know, there's a certain sense in which that's fair. If we're asking people to lay their entire eternal destiny into the hands of Jesus Christ, is it unfair that they want some proof that He maybe is really the person He claimed to be?

Is that unfair? I don't think so. So where does that leave us as followers of Christ? I mean, is there a way to prove that Jesus really is the Messiah, the Christ, the Son of God, God wrapped in human flesh and everything else He claimed to be?

Can we do that to people in a way that we could maybe even take into a courtroom and that it would stand up? Well, that's what we want to talk about today. And we want to use an instant out of the life of the apostle Paul as our launching pad. So let's look together here in Acts chapter 18. Remember what's going on here in the end of Acts chapter 18, Paul is concluding his second missionary journey.

Let's show you a map. The apostle Paul has traveled through Greece. He's gone to Philippi. He's gone to Thessalonica, Berea, down to Athens. And now, as you can see, he and Corinth in the blue part of your map, he has spent 18 months in the town of Corinth working with the church there. Acts chapter 18, he leaves Corinth, sails across the Aegean Sea to the city of Ephesus where he leaves his two traveling companions, Priscilla and Aquila. And then Paul sails on, it's out of your map here, it's down to the far right, sails on to head home to his hometown, the city of Antioch. He began his second missionary journey in the year 50 A.D. and now he's concluding it in the fall of the year 53 A.D. He's finishing up that journey.

Now, with that little bit of background, let's pick up verse 21. Then the Bible says the apostle Paul set sail from Ephesus, verse 22. And when he landed at Caesarea, he went up and greeted the church there and then he went down to Antioch.

He's back home, second missionary journey is done. Well, verse 24, meanwhile, back in Ephesus, a Jewish man named Apollos, a native of Alexandria in Egypt, came to Ephesus. He was a learned man with a thorough knowledge of the Scriptures. Now, we need to know that at the time of the apostle Paul, the city of Alexandria in Egypt was regarded as the scholarly capital of the world. The University of Alexandria was the most prestigious university anywhere in the Roman Empire. The largest library in the Roman world was located here in Alexandria. In the apostle Paul's day, studying in Alexandria would be today like studying at Oxford or Harvard.

You know what I'm saying. It's also important for us to know that at the time of the apostle Paul, Alexandria was home to the largest and the most influential Jewish community outside of Israel itself. And so, therefore, any Jewish man who had studied here in Alexandria, as Apollos had, would be a man with a thorough knowledge of the Scripture exactly the way the Bible says of Apollos. Now, the Bible tells us one more exciting thing, however, about this guy Apollos.

The Bible tells us that he was a follower of Jesus Christ. Let's look at verse 25. Apollos had been instructed, the Bible says, in the way of the Lord and he spoke with great fervor and taught about Jesus accurately. And Apollos began to speak boldly there in the synagogue in Ephesus.

Now, what the Bible tells us here in verse 25 raises a question. And the question is, how did Apollos become instructed in the way of the Lord? Who did he come to Christ? Who told him that Jesus was the Messiah as a Jewish man? Who discipled him? Who mentored him spiritually such that he was able to teach about Jesus accurately and go into the synagogue and defend that position? Well, the answer is we really don't know.

That's the answer. The Bible never really tells us how Apollos came to Christ. It's possible that the evangelist Mark, you know, who wrote the second gospel, Matthew, Mark. Church tradition tells us that Mark went to Alexandria, Egypt very early after the resurrection of Jesus and started the church there. He was actually martyred according to church tradition there in Alexandria.

And so it's very possible that Apollos, who was living in Alexandria, it's very possible he ran into Mark on the street. Mark led him to Christ and Mark discipled him. It's also possible that he was traveling outside of Egypt and he ran into some believer somewhere that led him to Christ. It's also possible that he went on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem for Passover or some other Jewish festival and then he met Peter or James or John in Jerusalem and they told him about Christ. Friends, the bottom line is we really don't know how this guy came to Christ.

But what we do know is that he was a mature, discipled, biblically educated follower of Christ and that he had a passion, he had a fervency to tell people about Jesus Christ. Now, verse 27, and when Apollos wanted to go to Achaia, now let's go back to our map, show you where Achaia is. Remember Paul, I mean, forgive me, Apollos is over here at Ephesus and he wants to go to Achaia.

That's the blue part on your map, the southern part of Greece where Athens and Corinth were both located. He said, well, why did he want to go there? Friends, I don't know. Why did Hudson Taylor want to go to China? Why did Adoniram Judson want to go to Burma? Why did William Carey want to go to India?

I don't know. The Spirit of God called him to go there. That's why he had a passion and a calling when he wanted to go there as a missionary. The Bible says that the believers at Ephesus encouraged him and wrote to the believers there in Corinth to welcome him. On arriving in Corinth, Apollos was a great help to those who by grace had believed.

And what kind of help was he? Well, the Bible says Apollos vigorously refuted the Jews in public debate. Now, you take on one of my people in public debate, you better be good. You know what I'm saying?

He was good. He took him on in public debate proving from the Scriptures that Jesus was the Messiah. You know what they say where there's two Jews, there's three opinions. You understand what I'm saying?

You argue with us, you better be good. And this guy took him on in public debate and put him down, shut him down, proving from the Scriptures. And remember these are the Old Testament Scriptures. The New Testament Scriptures weren't written yet. He went into the Old Testament and proved that Jesus was the Messiah. He was invincible, the Bible says, in public debate. He was an evangelistic force.

He was an apologetic force in that city that was something to be reckoned with. Now, that's as far as we want to go in our passage because there's a question that I know you came here today with a burning desire to ask. Yeah? Okay.

Well, even if you didn't, let's give it your best. What do you say? You're ready?

One, two, three. So what? All right. You say, Lon, so what? Say, this is great and Alexandria and Hov and all this kind of stuff.

What difference does any of this make to my life? Let me see if we can explain that connection for you, okay? Let's go back to what we said at the very beginning of this message. We said that Americans are empirical people, that Americans want proof and that this is especially true when it comes to asking Americans to commit their entire eternal destiny to Jesus Christ. So what proof can we offer people that will convince them that might even stand up in a court of law if it was taken in there that Jesus is really who He said He is? Friends, I believe we need to prove to people that Jesus is the Messiah the same way that Apollos proved it. How did he prove it? He proved it from the Scriptures, right? Look what Jesus said. Luke chapter 18.

He's heading to Jerusalem for His final visit before He's crucified. And the Bible says, He took His 12 disciples aside and said to them, We are going up to Jerusalem and everything that was written by the Old Testament prophets about the Messiah is going to be fulfilled. In the Old Testament, I don't know if you realize this, but there are over 100 prophecies in the Old Testament that deal with the Messiah. In fact, I've given you a sheet inside your bulletin today.

It's yellow with just 60 some of them. These are just the ones that relate to the first coming, the first appearing of the Messiah, not the second appearing. And Jesus said that I'm going to fulfill every single one of these. And friends, the way that Apollos refuted the Jews in public debate, the way that he proved from the Scriptures that Jesus was the Messiah is that he took those Jewish people back to these prophecies. He took them back to these predictions that were somewhere between 500 and 2500 years old about the Messiah. And he demonstrated to these Jewish people in Corinth that Jesus Christ fulfilled every one of these prophecies completely and perfectly. And then he turned to them and he said, And so, fellas, who else could Jesus be?

Who else could He be? Now, we've been through a bunch of these prophecies before. Most recently, several months ago in part 41 of this series, a message entitled How to Prove Jesus is the Messiah, we covered a whole bunch of these prophecies listed on your yellow sheet. You can pick up this tape in the bookstore.

I'm not going to do it again. But today, what I want us to do is to look at one of these Old Testament prophecies that we haven't looked at here in a long, long time. It's called the prophecy of the 77s. It's found in the ninth chapter of the Book of Daniel. And so if you brought a Bible today, you might want to flip to Daniel Chapter 9. And while you're turning, let me give you a little bit of background. This, I believe, is the most powerful prophecy about the Messiah anywhere in the Old Testament because it pinpoints the exact year of the Messiah's appearing in a way that is indisputable, in a way that is unarguable.

Here's a little background. Daniel is in Babylon along with all the Jewish people. They were taken there as captives by King Nebuchadnezzar in 606 BC. It's now 538 BC.

Daniel is an old man now in his 90s. And one day in 538 BC, he was sitting around and reading the prophecy of Jeremiah. And Jeremiah had said, Jeremiah 29, 10, For thus says the Lord, After 70 years in Babylon, I will come to you and bring you back to this place, that is Jerusalem.

I will gather you from all the nations where I have banished you, and I will bring you back. Okay, 606 is when the captivity started. 70 years is 536. Well, Daniel is sitting and reading this in 538. And suddenly he realized, oh my gosh, in two years, those 70 years are up. God's going to be taking us back to Jerusalem.

And by the way, that happened. Two years later, Cyrus the Great, the king of Persia, allowed the first group of Jewish refugees to return to Jerusalem. 50,000 of them, in fact, you'll find this recorded in the book of Ezra. Under the leadership of Zerubbabel, it happened just the way God said. But Daniel, realizing that it's just a couple years away, starts praying about this return, starts praying about the Jewish people, starts praying about their future. And as a result, the angel Gabriel comes to him here in Daniel 9 and gives him the most monumental prophecy, I believe, anywhere in the Bible in relationship to the Jewish people and their future. And I don't have time to go through the whole prophecy with you that lays out the Jewish future, that lays out the antichrist and the end of the age. You can go pick up our tape. I did this on tape years ago in the bookstore in Daniel 9, the prophecy of the 77s.

Pick it up in the bookstore. But all I want to do today is focus on the one part of this prophecy that talks about the appearing of the Messiah. So look, verse 24, Daniel 9. 77s, the Bible says, are decreed for your people, the Jewish people, and your holy city, Jerusalem. Now, the 77s here are 70 groups, 70 bundles, if you will, of seven years each, or 490 years. And this is why the prophecy is called the prophecy of the 77s. Now, the next verse, verse 25, from the decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem, there's your starting point, until, here's your ending point, the Messiah comes will be 69 of these bundles of seven years. That is, 69 times 7 is 483 years. But don't forget, the Jews used a lunar calendar, and a lunar year is slightly shorter than a solar year that we use in the Gregorian calendar. So when we make that correction, this turns out to be 476 solar Gregorian years. Now, what does the Bible say? The Bible says from the starting point to the ending point is going to be 476 years.

Well, what's the starting point? Remember, the starting point is from the decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem. When was that? Folks, there was only one such decree ever recorded. It was recorded in Nehemiah chapter 1 and 2. It was given by King Artaxerxes II of Persia in the 20th year of his reign, the Bible says. And we can nail that down with absolute and precise certainty, historically, to 445 BC.

That was the 20th year of King Artaxerxes II. Okay, there's our starting point, right? 445 BC, you can write that down in the margin of your Bible.

That was the starting point. Now, the Bible says, if we move 476 years forward, we will come to the ending point. And what is the ending point? The ending point is until the Messiah appears. And so, if we go 476 years forward from 445 BC, we should find the Messiah staring us right in the eyeballs, is what the Bible says.

So, let's do a little bit of subtraction, shall we? 445 BC, and we take away 476 years, we move forward 476 years, that's our 69 sevens. And of course, we take away the year zero, because there is no such year. And what we end up with is 30 AD as the year of the Messiah's appearing. This is what the prophecy says should happen. Let's see, can we think of anybody who appeared around 30 AD, who might just have claimed to be the Messiah and fulfilled everything the Messiah said? Can you think of anybody? I think of somebody, I think of Jesus.

And because the Bible tells us that he began his public ministry in the year 30 AD, and he showed up on the scene exactly when this prophecy said he was going to be there. You know, I just returned from a trip following the footsteps of St. Paul. And we were in Rome one day, and I woke up, we're getting ready to go out in the morning, and I turned on BBC World to see what the weather was going to be like.

And they had this lady on there, and she was showing all these fancy images, you know, with the clouds swirling and the yellow and the red and the storms and computer generated. And she said, in Rome today, it's going to be stormy and wet, it's going to rain heavy. So I took my umbrella, I took my jacket, I told my son, take your umbrella, take your jacket, it's going to rain. And I prayed, I prayed, I said, Oh God, please don't let it rain on us that day, send that rain to France. But anyway, but anyway, you know, you know what? We went out that day, and I'm schlepping my jacket and my umbrella all over the city of Rome, and it didn't rain one drop.

It was beautiful sunny all day long. And isn't that amazing, with all of our computers and all of our technology and all of our modern science, we can't even predict what it's going to do 24 hours ahead of time, and here God in the Bible, 550 years ahead of time, predicts the exact year that the Messiah is going to show up, and Jesus showed up right on schedule. Right here in Daniel 9, we have an exact chronological prediction of when the Messiah should appear, and you don't need a PhD or seminary degree to understand Daniel 9. You don't need a computer or a calculator to figure it out. Friends, you can do it on an abacus.

You can do it on your fingers and your toes. And you know, in Luke chapter 2, do you remember when Jesus at age 12 went into the temple? The Bible says there was a guy there named Simeon, the Bible says, who was waiting for the appearing of the Messiah.

There was also a Lady Anna there, the Bible says, who was waiting and praying for the imminent appearing of the Messiah. Now, how did these people know that the Messiah was imminent, was about to show up any day? Well, you say, maybe an angel appeared to them and told them. That's possible.

You know what else is possible? It's possible they read Daniel chapter 9. They multiplied and subtracted, and they knew He had to be close.

I was in Israel, and you say, wait a minute, Lon, before you tell us that, let me ask you a question first. How do you know for certain that this is real? I mean, how do you know for certain that they didn't go back? I mean, they saw Jesus appear in 30 AD, so they went back and they rewrote the book of Daniel.

So the book of Daniel came out with Him appearing in 30 BC. How do you know this isn't just a big con game? How do you know this isn't just a big hoax? Well, up until 1947, if you'd have asked me that question, I couldn't have given you a great answer.

I would have had to say, well, we can't be sure. But, friends, we can be sure now because in 1947, the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered. And among the Dead Sea Scrolls, we have a complete copy of the book of Daniel dated to 150 BC. That's 150 years before Jesus ever lived.

And guess what? Daniel chapter 9 in that copy says exactly what Daniel chapter 9 says in your Bible. Nobody went back and rewrote this, folks. And if they didn't, then what other explanation is there than that Jesus is exactly who the Bible claims Him to be? And He showed up right on schedule. I was in Israel in 1983, and I was riding with this tour guide. There was just four of us, my wife, friend, and I, and another couple. And we had a tour guide who was taking us around, and they put me in the front seat with him. And so we got to talking, and he said we found out I was Jewish, and then he found out I believed in Jesus. And so he said to me, what proof could there possibly be that Jesus is the Messiah?

So I started going through some. I gave him Isaiah 53. He goes, Oh, no, no. He said, I've heard that one. My rabbi's got another way of interpreting that. I said, all right. Well, so I gave him Micah chapter 2.

Oh, no, no. He said, my rabbi's another way of interpreting that. So I gave him Psalm 22, Psalm 110. Oh, no, my rabbi's got a different way of interpreting that. I gave him all these. Oh, no, my rabbi's...

So finally I was getting really frustrated. And I said, what about Daniel chapter 9? He said, I never heard about that one.

What's that one? And I told him just what I told you. And I said, so friend, who can you think of that showed up in 30 A.D. that met the qualifications of being the Messiah and claimed to be the Messiah other than Jesus? He said, there's got to be another interpretation to that passage. He said, I'm going to go to my rabbi and ask.

I said, wait a minute, wait a minute. This passage is not based on theological interpretation. It's based on multiplication and subtraction. And unless your rabbi can change the laws of mathematics, there's no other way to interpret it. And he made this comment to me. He said, well, I'm going anyway to ask my rabbi for another explanation. But even if he can't explain it some other way, I still will never believe in Jesus. Now, what was this tour guide's problem? Friends, it wasn't information. Shoot, I'd given him enough information in the front of that car to make 10 decisions for Christ if he wanted to.

Information wasn't his problem. His problem was the condition of his heart. He didn't have a heart that was humble and broken and ready to do business with God and submit to God.

He had a heart that was willful and stubborn and obstinate. And may I say that if you're here today and you've never given your life to Jesus Christ, that it's really easy for you to begin thinking, well, if I just can get some more information, if I can just learn some more, maybe the light will suddenly go off and I'll be ready. Folks, if you are here today listening to me, I've given you enough information already if you want to make a decision for Christ to prove to you that he's who he said he is. Hey, listen, don't dupe yourself into believing you need more information.

You don't. You need a very tiny bit of information to make a decision for Christ. What you need if you haven't made a decision for Christ is a heart that's humble and broken and ready to do business with God on God's terms and surrender to God on God's terms. And so at least if you're not ready to do that, know what the real issue is. Don't kid yourself into thinking something is the issue that isn't.

The issue is always the condition of man's heart and women's heart. Well, let me conclude by saying as followers of Christ, what we have here is an absolutely airtight proof that Jesus has to be the Messiah. And it's not based on somebody's theology.

It's based on subtraction and multiplication. And now, friends, why did God go to the trouble of writing this in the Bible five and a half centuries before it happened? Because as followers of Jesus Christ, he wants us to have an unshakable confidence, an absolute certainty that Jesus is who he claimed to be and that we can trust him with our life, with our children, with our grandchildren, with our eternal destiny, with our future, our plans, our hopes, our dreams, with everything, because he's who he said he is.

It's like Peter said. He said, We have not followed cleverly devised fables, for we have verified for ourselves that what the Old Testament prophets predicted has come true. And the reason God gave us those Old Testament prophecies was so you and I could go out every morning and be 110% sure that Jesus is the one we can trust with our life, our destiny, and every part of our being.

God also did this, wrote this in the Bible. So when people say to us, Hey, prove to me Jesus is the Messiah, and I'll believe that you and I'll have something real and tangible and irrefutable to offer them. So what I want to do in closing is to urge you to pick up a stack of these CDs from this morning, a stack of tapes, keep them in your foyer table, your desk at work, keep them in your glove compartment of your car, and the next time somebody comes up to you and says, Prove to me that Jesus really is the Messiah, I want you to be able to say to them, Ooh, have I got something for you.

And you open that drawer or that glove compartment and hand them one of these. Friends, five and a half centuries before it happened, we have the prediction of the year the Messiah is coming. And guess what? He came right on schedule. He is who He said. We can trust Him.

Let's pray. Lord Jesus, thanks for encouraging our faith this morning by reminding us once again that as Peter said, this is not a cleverly devised fable. This is not a hoax.

It's not a con game. This is a real and legitimate truth that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, the Savior of the world, the Christ, and that we can trust Him, Lord, what He did for us on the cross as payment for our wrongdoing, His resurrection as certainty that we are going to heaven. And Lord, we can lay our whole life and future in His hands without any fear. Now my prayer is that you would help us not only to walk out of our houses sure of this, but that you would help us walk out of our houses every morning as missionaries, that we would be missionaries every day, everywhere we go, because we have the truth and it has stood the test. And so God, may we not be ashamed of telling people about you. May we be excited about it because we know you take Daniel 9 into a court of law and it's proof that we'll stand up. So thanks for talking to us today. Encourage our faith and change our behavior because we were here today and we pray this in Jesus' name and God's people said, amen.