THE LONGING OF PROPHETS OF OLD AND THE ANGELS

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In Christ, Mark

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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

This salvation was something even the prophets wanted to know more about when they prophesied about this gracious salvation prepared for you. They wondered what time or situation the Spirit of Christ within them was talking about when He told them in advance about Christ’s suffering and His great glory afterward.

They were told that their messages were not for themselves, but for you. And now this Good News has been announced to you by those who preached in the power of the Holy Spirit sent from Heaven. It is all so wonderful that even the angels are eagerly watching these things happen.

1 Peter 1:10-12 NLT

This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

Jesus’ coming wasn’t supposed to be a surprise to anyone. God didn’t intend it to be that way and the Old Testament testifies to it in many places, particularly through the words of the prophets.

Isaiah is the one where we find the most references to the coming Messiah who would be given the name Jesus. Early on in the book, we read these words:

Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a Son, and will call him Immanuel. 7:14

The people walking in darkness have seen a great Light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a Light has dawned.

For to us a Child is born, to us a Son is given, and the government will be on His shoulders. And He will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the greatness of His government and peace there will be no end. 9:2, 6-7

While these verses speak of Jesus’ coming into the world, a Son given in birth through a virgin to be the Light of a world that was walking and living in great darkness. Later, we read about what would happen at the end of Jesus’ life in chapter 53:

He grew up before Him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to Him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire Him.

He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces, He was despised, and we held Him in low esteem.

Surely He took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered Him punished by God, stricken by Him, and afflicted. But He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on Him, and by His wounds we are healed.

We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and afflicted, yet He did not open His mouth; He was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so He did not open his mouth. By oppression and judgment, He was taken away. Yet who of His generation protested? For He was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgression of My people He was punished.

He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in His death, though He had done no violence, nor was any deceit in His mouth. Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush Him and cause Him to suffer, and though the Lord makes His life an offering for sin, He will see His offspring and prolong His days, and the will of the Lord will prosper in His hand. After He has suffered, He will see the light of life and be satisfied; by His knowledge, My righteous servant will justify many, and He will bear their iniquities.

Therefore I will give him a portion among the great, and He will divide the spoils with the strong, because He poured out His life unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors. For He bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.

Speaking through Isaiah, God was giving His people a preview of what was to come approximately 600 years later. As the Lord’s messenger, Isaiah knew what was coming but he didn’t know when.

The same was true for Micah who God used to give the place where the Messiah Jesus would be born but not the time it would happen.

But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me One who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times. 5:2

And then there are these words from Zechariah as God speaks about Jesus’ future triumphal entry into Jerusalem to trigger the final week of His life, a final week that would end with His crucifixion and piercing. We also see God here affirming that He and His Son were one:

Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion! Shout, Daughter Jerusalem! See, your King comes to you, righteous and victorious, lowly and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. 9:9

And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and supplication. They will look on Me, the One they have pierced, and they will mourn for Him as one mourns for an only child, and grieve bitterly for Him as one grieves for a firstborn son. 12:10

There are others we could look at here but the point is clear. These men that God spoke through each had different parts of the coming Messiah story to tell but they didn’t provide any time reference. Those they spoke to had no more notice about Jesus’ first coming than we do today about His second.

With this, we turn to the words of Peter as we continue to study from his first letter written to persecuted Christians “scattered throughout the provinces of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia” (v.1). Let’s look again at our passage for today:

This salvation was something even the prophets wanted to know more about when they prophesied about this gracious salvation prepared for you. They wondered what time or situation the Spirit of Christ within them was talking about when He told them in advance about Christ’s suffering and His great glory afterward.

They were told that their messages were not for themselves, but for you. And now this Good News has been announced to you by those who preached in the power of the Holy Spirit sent from Heaven. It is all so wonderful that even the angels are eagerly watching these things happen. 1:10-12 NLT

As Peter reminded his readers of the blessed living hope they had through their belief in Jesus, a living hope that would one day result in an everlasting life filled with “inexpressible and glorious joy”, he wants them to know that they know now what the “prophets wanted to know more about” when they “prophesied about” the coming “gracious salvation”. In sharing God’s word of His Son’s coming “suffering and His great glory afterward”, “messages...not for themselves” but for those who would read their words generation after generation, the prophets “wondered what time” all this would take place.

This “Good News” of salvation from God through His Son that was proclaimed by the prophets was the same Gospel that Peter’s reading had heard “preached in the power of the Holy Spirit sent from Heaven”. It’s the same Good News that we hear and receive today, like in this message for example. It’s “so wonderful” that the angels in Heaven, those who have never been separated from God and are unaware of life on earth and the struggles of sinners there, “long to look into these things” (v.12 NIV).  

Friends, so many people take a stance that the Old Testament isn’t significant, that the Christian church should be a New Testament church only. But as we see in today’s message, the Bible in its entirety, from Genesis to Revelation, is the story of God’s redemptive plan for Israel and all other nations through His one and only Son Jesus, a plan to save people from an eternity in Hell while inviting them into permanent residency with Him in the blessed beauty of Heaven.

With this, we should savor and enjoy every word we read from the scriptures and see how God connects everything from Alpha to Omega, all through His Son and our Savior, the Messiah Jesus.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

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