It is HIStory! (Part 2 of 2)

When we look carefully at Isaiah's prophecy about the coming Messiah, we realize the whole Bible is about Jesus. Not only that, but as we'll see today on Truth for Life, all of history is His story.

Alistair Begg is teaching from the opening verses of Isaiah chapter 9. I'm not actually a great fan of nativity scenes as it happens, because they tend to trivialize the thing. They tend to sentimentalize the thing.

They tend to make it possible for people to look in and go, Oh, look at that! Look at that! But there's nothing that arrests you in it.

There's nothing that stands you up on your heels. There's nothing that says, Listen! You can do whatever you want with nativity scenes. But the fact of the matter is that here Jesus Christ is revealed as taking on our flesh so that he might take upon himself our sins. Remember how Mark begins his gospel? The beginning of the gospel. Jesus comes into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God and saying—here we go again—the time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand.

Repent and believe the gospel. And Luke records Jesus' statement to his startled and frightened followers after the encounter on the road to Emmaus, and, remember, on that occasion, Jesus reveals himself to them, and they are quite amazed. He said to them, You're kind of slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken. It was necessary that the Christ—that's the Messiah—should suffer these things and enter his glory. And he said, Well, why don't I just give you a little Bible study while you're here?

And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself. No wonder they were startled. No wonder they were amazed. And when he appeared to them, remember, when they were hidden away, he said to them, Why are you troubled? Why do doubts arise in your heart? Don't you see my hands and my feet?

You can touch me. That's why when John writes in his letter, remember, he says, That which we have seen and heard, that which our hands have touched, we declare to you. This is not a concept. This is a flesh-and-blood reality. This is the story.

This is his story. And 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. In other words, the entire New Testament testifies to its understanding of Jesus as the Messiah promised in the Old Testament. Without the New Testament, the Old Testament's going nowhere. Unless you have the New Testament, the Old Testament leads you up a side street.

And without the Old Testament, the New Testament demands all kinds of explanations that aren't there in the New Testament. So that's why I say to you routinely, it takes a whole Bible to make a whole Christian. And that's why I'm saying to you that the neglect of the Advent season, the sensible preparation so that there might be sensible participation, is a serious neglect. I own up to that. I own up to it in my own life. Maybe you do too. Maybe that's why the Christmas carols have so little ring to them. Because we have failed to prepare adequately by thinking the issues out, by actually thinking, being transformed by the renewing of our minds, actually saying, I'm gonna have to think about this.

This is immense! And it's not simply that the New Testament fulfills certain Old Testament predictions. It does. So, for example, Isaiah 7, and he will give his name Immanuel, which means God with us. And you can go from there to the arrival of Jesus. You can do the same in 9, as we're about to do, concerning the child who is to be born. And so we're familiar with doing that, but most of us only have about three or four of them. And when we tell our friends and neighbors, Oh, no, but you don't understand, you see, this equals this.

Let me tell you how the skeptic feels about that. They feel that we just mugged it up, and that we really don't have much of a clue about the entire story of the Old Testament, and we just found three or four verses that we could draw a line between and say X equals Y. And they say, Well, how come this is something that is establishing your life and directing your future and is the key to your existence, and you don't even know what you're talking about? No, you see, it's not enough simply to say that Micah 5 is over here in Matthew, or Isaiah 7 is over here in Luke, or whatever it might be. No, what it actually tells us is that Jesus doesn't simply fulfill certain Old Testament expectations or predictions. Jesus fulfills the entire Old Testament. The only way to understand the entire Old Testament is in the person and work of Jesus.

Now, if you think that out, it is immense. What it means is that Jesus has no peers. Jesus has no rivals. Jesus has no successors. There is no one—no one—in the entire universe who comes close to Jesus of Nazareth. Either he is a megalomaniac declaring, The entire Bible is about me!

Or the entire Bible is about him. Remember, I always tell you, Archbishop of Canterbury to Jane Fonda. My archbishop says to Jane Fonda, Jesus Christ is the Son of God, you know. Jane Fonda says, Well, he may be the Son of God for you, but he's not the Son of God for me. The Archbishop of Canterbury says, Jane, he either is or he isn't.

There's no for me about it. It's his story. I came across a wonderful quote that has helped me immensely this week, and I'm going to give it to you. And if you're a scribbler, you can scribble.

And if you're not, tough. You can get it later on. In a book of theology introducing the thirty-nine articles of the Church of England, which is the doctrinal statement upon which the Church of England was based in the way that the Westminster Confession is for the Presbyterian Church, Griffith Thomas, in an earlier era, wrote as follows concerning the Old Testament. It is a book of unfulfilled prophecies, unexplained ceremonies, and unsatisfied longings.

Okay? Unfulfilled prophecies, unexplained ceremonies, and unsatisfied longings. That seems to me to be very honest.

I'm sure you would agree. Because when you read in the Old Testament, you say to yourself, well, how is this supposed to work out? Here we are, and unless this road leads somewhere to fulfillment, I don't know what to do with it.

And what about all these strange ceremonies? And what about the fact that this creates within me a longing for an end to this story? Then he says, all of which—that is, the unfulfilled prophecy, the unexplained ceremony, the unsatisfied longing—all of which are resolved in the New Testament's focus on Jesus Christ. Here we go. Who fulfills in his life the prophecies, explains in his death the ceremonies, and satisfies in his resurrection the longings?

I find that wonderfully helpful. If you can get a hold of that and think that out and chew on that over this advent season, it will be a tremendous help in speaking with people when they're asking sensible questions about why it is that we hold out a reason for hoping in a world that is increasingly hopeless. It is in Jesus that the prophecies are fulfilled by his life. It is in his death that the ceremonies are explained, and it is in his resurrection that our longings are satisfied. As staggering as it sounds, the focus and meaning of history, its goal and its climax, is the person and work of Jesus of Nazareth. That's a biblical view of the world. Now, Jesus is not a sideline. Jesus is not a philosophical idea. Jesus Christ is a figure of history to be reckoned with. And when we read our Bibles, we come up against it immediately. And as we will see in Isaiah 9, either Jesus, in his person and his work, becomes a refuge for us and a safety for us, or he becomes a stumbling block to us.

We either turn to him and find in him safety, or we turn from him and stumble over him. Saul of Tarsus was convinced that the only thing to do with Jesus of Nazareth and his followers was exactly what had been done. And that is why he was committed to the destruction of this fledgling group of weirdos who had begun to fan out from Jerusalem with the news that Jesus of Nazareth was not only alive from the dead but he was the sovereign Lord of glory. And you will remember his story—how, breathing out threatenings and slaughterings, he decided to go to Damascus, having the requisite paperwork put together so that he might take some more of these crazies and have them incarcerated or have them obliterated. And on the road to Damascus, he meets none other than the historical Jesus. And into the darkness of the mind of Saul of Tarsus, the light of the reality of God shines. And he is changed.

He becomes absolutely new. It's quite staggering, the nature of his conversion. He previously thought Jesus was dead and irrelevant. Previously thought the church was just a rabble of nonsense people. And within a very short order, he is out in the amongst the synagogues saying, Jesus of Nazareth is alive, and these are my brothers and sisters in Jesus.

And I used to think that you earned your acceptance with God, but I've discovered that you don't, and that it is on account of his mercy that we ever know him in any meaningful way. That, you see, what had happened to Saul of Tarsus was that he was converted. It wasn't that he became religious, because he was phenomenally religious at the get-go. No, he was converted. And when a person is converted, then they have a totally different view of who Jesus is, they have a totally different perspective on who they are, and they have a totally different perspective on the church of Jesus Christ. Otherwise, how do you explain these words from the pen of Saul of Tarsus right into the Christians in Colossae?

This is what he says. "'For by him'"—that is, Jesus—"for by him all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities. All things were created through him and for him, and he is before all things, and in him all things hold together."

Now, where did you come up with that, Saul? For by him and through him and for him is everything. He is the one of whom the prophet spoke. It brings us to Isaiah 9. And there we discover that he is the true light who is coming into the world.

The people of walking in darkness have seen a great light. We're gonna have to come back to this. But let me reinforce for us, before we go, this simple fact that the storyline of the Bible is the storyline of people and events in space and time who are involved in God's purpose from all of eternity to save. The story of the Bible is this—Jesus saves us. Jesus saves sinners.

That's the story. That's what the whole Bible is about. If you miss that, you lose your way all around the Bible. Jesus saves us, we don't save ourselves.

That's the story. Saul thought he could save himself, he discovered he couldn't, and then he was very glad that he discovered that there was someone who could. And when you come back into Isaiah 9, seven hundred years before Jesus, you're stepping back into history.

There were people having their breakfast then, putting on their clothes, saying their prayers, reading the Bible, trusting the promises of God—people just like you and me. And one of them is this character Isaiah. You can read about Isaiah, how he's called into the ministry in chapter 6, when he goes into the temple and he has an encounter with God. Holy, holy, holy Lord God Almighty, I am a man of unclean lips, he says, and I dwell in a people of unclean lips. And then the voice comes out from heaven and says, I'm looking for someone to go for me. Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? And Isaiah says, maybe me.

Right? Would I go for you? Could I go? See, I know we tend to think of it as like, and Isaiah said, I will go for you, I'm Isaiah after all.

No, no, no, I don't think so. He's like, well, I don't know. I don't know if you want me, but I'll take a stab at it. But you're going to have to write the script. You're going to have to tell me what to say.

God says, that's fine. You see how exciting it gets, then? You see, because this is 740 BC, by and large. It's chaos! The kingdom is divided. The ten northern tribes are all fiddling around with Assyria. The two tribes in the south, who are called Judah, are trying to remain true to the Word of God and to the kingship of David.

But it's chaos! And God says, Isaiah, you and I are going to do some writing. And he has a wife. We don't know her name. She's called the prophetess. Not a bad name. It's interesting that her name is not in the Bible. A lot of the wives of the prophets' names are not well known. And he has two sons. Their names are in.

So they should be. Amazing names. Go out to meet Ahaz, Isaiah, and take your boy with you. Shear, Jashub, Jashub. Shear, Jashub.

Okay? And then God gives him another boy, and he and the prophetess take it up a notch in chapter 8, and they call him Meher-shalal-hashbas. A bit of a mouthful.

Where are your sneakers? Meher-shalal-hashbas. And we just call them baz for short.

I don't know. But here's the point I want you to understand. There was a real Isaiah. He had a real wife. He had real kids.

He lived in a real moment in time. God invaded his life, picked him up and used him, and gave him these words to speak. They were his words. It was his context.

He knew what was going on, and yet he was superintended by the Holy Spirit in doing what he did. And so, when he came home at the end of the day and his wife said, You have a good time in your study? And he said, Yeah, it was pretty good. And she said, Well, what were you writing about today? And he said, Well, I wrote down, The people walking in darkness have seen a gray light, and those walking in the land of the shadow a light has dawned. And the prophetess said, What does that mean? And he said, I thought you were gonna ask that. I'm not sure. I haven't written the rest of it yet.

But I'll get back to you. And in actual fact, even he, Isaiah, is described in Peter as one of the prophets who is standing on his tiptoes, looking, as it were, down through the corridor of time to actually discover for himself what it is he's actually writing down. Because it takes it way beyond 700 B.C. and takes it right into the reality of the shores of Galilee and right into the reality of Cleveland, Ohio, so that the ceremonies that I do not understand and the longings that I cannot find fulfilled may be met in a child.

In a child. For unto us a child is born, and unto us a son is given. And the prophetess says, And what's that about?

Isaiah says we're gonna have to wait. But we don't have to wait, because we have the New Testament, so that we can understand the Old Testament, so that we can believe in the one of whom the Old Testament speaks, so that we can prepare for the celebration of Christmas by welcoming to our hearts and to our homes Christ himself, born to raise the sons of the earth, born to give them second birth. Have you been born again? Are you a new person, a whole different view of Jesus, a whole different view of the church, a whole different view of what it means to be accepted by God?

Well, I hope so. Are you a new person? That's Alistair Begg asking a vital question that each of us has to consider. You're listening to Truth for Life.

Alistair Begg returns in just a minute. If you'd like to find out more about the gospel and what it means to be born again, you can take a few minutes and watch a couple of free videos on our website. You'll also find additional teaching from Alistair about the basics of Christianity.

Visit truthforlife.org slash learn more. Alistair often says it takes a whole Bible to make a whole Christian, and that is why at Truth for Life, we teach from the Old Testament and the New. We encourage every pastor to do the same so that local churches will be strengthened.

We recently heard from a pastor in Australia whose name is Chris. He wrote to say, thank you so much for the free download of the book Brave By Faith. It greatly encouraged me as a pastor in a very liberal denomination and in a difficult area for gospel ministry.

I've been listening to Alistair Begg's series on Romans, Jude, and 2 Timothy. Thank you for making so much material available. I praise God for this ministry. We would love for you to read stories like Chris's and see just how far and wide God is working through Truth for Life. Many of these stories we've collected on our website at truthforlife.org slash stories. And we want you to know that every donation to Truth for Life makes these stories possible.

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Ask for the books when you make a donation at truthforlife.org slash donate. Now here's Alistair. Gracious God, we thank you that we have a Bible that we can go back and read, that it demands our careful attention, that it's not just a big promise book that we reach in and grab a few blessed thoughts from, although it's full of blessing and full of promises. But rather, it takes us and confronts us with the wonder of the fact that from all of eternity you have purposed to put together a people that are your very own, and that it is the utterly undeserved privilege of all who believe to be included in a company that no one can even count. Well, thank you, Lord Jesus Christ, that you humbled yourself and entered into time and into space.

Your glory veiled. No one would have looked at that birth scene and said, There's the Messiah of God. And even on your cross, people would never have said, That must be the Messiah.

They would have said, That can't be the Messiah. It is only by faith that we ever look upon you and say, This is the Lamb of God who not only takes away the sin of the world but takes away my sin. O holy child of Bethlehem, descend to us, we pray. Cast out our sin and enter in. Be born in us today. Amen. I'm Bob Lapine. Tomorrow we'll see how living outside of Christ doesn't mean you're living in a neutral zone. You're actually living on the dark side. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life where the Learning is for Living.