The Central Prophecy of the Bible

If I asked you, what is the central prophecy of the Bible? Have you ever thought about that? Someone came to me and said, okay, I want you to take, just open a Bible and show me the prophecy that all other prophecy is about. What is that core prophecy? Then you can say, okay, all other prophecy is built on this. You know, I'm always talking about premise. What is our premise? What is the premise of prophecy? Some people say, well, let's go to the book of Ezekiel. Maybe it's there. Or Daniel. Or Revelation. What has to be found in the all of it prophecy of Jesus, right? We're going to talk about the central prophecy. Now, this is going to be more like a Bible study today. I've got lots of scriptures. I'll never get through everything I wrote down. I got up this morning and took out half the sermon, and I'll still never get through all of them. But I want to show you something so simple that you know. This is not new. You all know this. But I want to show you what the premise is. Because we're always looking for the continuity between the Old and New Testament. That's one of the great biblical study principles that we have. We're always looking for what is the continuity between the Old Testament and the New Testament. Because most Protestants believe there's a complete discontinuity, right? That's why it's the Old. That's why certain Bibles only have a New Testament. You don't need the Old because there's total discontinuity. We know there are differences, but we're always looking for how they fit together. So what is that one scripture? I'm going to go to that scripture, and then I'm going to show you a little bit how it's developed through the Old Testament. Just a little, because we literally have to go through hundreds and hundreds of prophecies. And then show you how the New Testament writers were inspired to interpret that. How did they interpret it? It's nothing new, like I said, for you. But I want you to show you where we start. I had two or three sermons of prophecy I was going to give, and I thought, you know what? Before I want to give those, let's go back to where we start. Because this is the foundation of all prophecy. Well, where is it? Where would I go? Let's start with Genesis chapter 3.

You know the story here. Adam and Eve rebelled against God. Follow Satan, who had come disguised, if you will, as a serpent. And now God comes, and they're filled with fear. They're filled with shame as they approach God. And they try to hide from God. So God calls them out. And God begins to say, here is the result of what you have done. They disobeyed God. They went against His way. And now they were following Satan's way.

And this would be the result of it. Verse 14. So let's pick this up in verse 14. So the Lord God said to the serpent, Because you have done this, you are cursed more than all cattle, more than every beast in the field, or your belly you shall go, and you shall eat dust all the days of your life. Now, as we talked about in the sermon, that Mr. Pereman, there's two things happening here. There's a curse put on the actual physical snakes. But who possessed the snake? The real curse then becomes on him.

Verse 15. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your seed and her seed. And ye shall bruise your head, and ye shall bruise his heel. To the woman he said, I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception. In pain you will bring forth children, your desire shall be for your husband, and ye shall rule over you.

In other words, this relationship between a husband and wife isn't going to work out very well. And you're going to physically deteriorate, I mean, none of us are what Adam and Eve were. So he said, one of the things that's going to happen is childbirth is going to be very difficult. It wasn't designed to be that difficult. It wasn't designed to be what women go through. God said, but you're going to deteriorate, and there's going to be problems. And you're going to have trouble with childbirth, and this relationship between a husband and wife is going to be stressed.

Then he says to Adam, verse 17, Because you have heeded the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you, saying you should not eat of it, curses the ground for your sake. He says, you know, I've maintained the earth. He says, I'm not going to maintain it anymore. God did not. God would have maintained the earth to control hurricanes. God would have maintained the earth to control tornadoes. God would have made sure the weather was correct. And I'm not saying there wouldn't have been different types of environment.

I mean, he created desert plains. He created mountain plains. He tended this to have different environments than it would have been controlled. He said, okay, I'm not controlling it anymore. He said, so it's going to be cursed. In toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life, both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you. You shall eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of your face you shall eat it, till you turn to the ground. For out of it you were taken, for dust you are, and to dust you shall return.

Verse 24, he drove out the man, and he placed caribbean at the east of the garden and eaten a flaming sword, which turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life. He drove them out. That is about the worst bad news I have ever read. And yet in there is the first prophecy. Can you forget what it is? What is it? What verse? Think about it. There's a verse in there that's the first prophecy, and it's the prophecy that all things have been...what is it?

Verse 15. Verse 15, I will put enmity between you and the woman, and her seed, between your seed and her seed. And he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel. There's going to be a battle between good and evil, and there's going to be a battle between Satan and human beings, and there will be a seed of this woman who will bruise Satan.

He will be bruised by Satan, and he will bruise Satan. It's interesting, in the Greek... in the Greek language, they actually have a name for this verse. It's the proto-evangelium. The big word. Proto...it's a prefix. Like prototype. It's the first. Evangelium...or Evangelion. One's plural, one's singular, but Evangelium is good news.

In Greek, they actually have a word for this verse. The first good news. And in the midst of all this bad news, there is a statement that says... God says...there's not a lot of information here. I mean, it doesn't tell us how it's going to happen. It's a statement that says, and I'll fix it. I'm going to remove Satan's rule over you. Now, it's a very simple statement, and you can't get all of the meaning out of that verse 15. All you know is God says, I'm going to do something. And the seed of a woman is going to do something to relieve what's happening to you. And that's all it says.

But it is the first, and it is the beginning of all prophecy. All prophecy comes from this first good news. Because all prophecy is about how Satan got control of human beings and how God's going to fix it. That's what all prophecy is. And how's he going to do it? Through the seed of a woman. A human being. Now, when I was here two weeks ago, I talked about the blessing, and I talked about the Abrahamic covenant. Let's go to Genesis 12. We read this. Because now we're going to jump ahead. We're jumping ahead 2,000 years here.

Give or take a look. So about 2,000 years later, God comes to Abraham, and he makes a statement. Now, in a minute, we're going to go to the New Testament and interpret this through the New Testament. Genesis 12, verse 1. Now, the Lord said to Abram, Get out of your country from your family, from your father's house to a land that I will show you. I will make you a great nation.

I will bless you. I will make your name great, and you shall be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you. I will curse him who curses you, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

Now, by itself, I would read that and say, I don't know where to put that. Now, if I start with Genesis 3.15, I say, okay, this somehow has to be tied back into Genesis 3.15. But how? You and I have remarkable knowledge, because we've taken all these pieces, and we've been able to lay them out the way God wants them laid out. If we put them together, we come to conclusions. So if I start with Genesis 3.15, I say, okay, God is going to somehow relieve the rule of Satan over human beings through the seed of a woman. I don't know how that's going to take place. I don't know who that person is. And now we have a statement that all the people of the earth will be blessed through Abraham. I'm not sure, though, if I don't have other information, what that means. Now let's go to Deuteronomy. I told you, we're going through a lot of Scriptures here. Deuteronomy 18. So now we're jumping ahead hundreds of years, centuries later, and we have something that Moses says, that God inspires Moses to say. Deuteronomy 18. Verse 15. The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet, like me from your midst, from your brethren, him you shall hear. According to all you desired of the Lord your God in Horeb, in the day of the assembly, saying, let me not hear again the voice of the Lord my God, or let us see the great fire anymore or less till we die. Now remember, what happened was God came down and stood on the mountain, and the people said, we have to have an intercessor. We can't listen to God. This is too great for us. So God said, okay, then I'll talk to Moses. And Moses says here, God's going to send somebody who will be like me. In other words, he'll be the intercessor. He will speak to you. He will speak to people, the words of God.

And the Lord said to me, verse 17, he says to Moses, What they have spoken is good, I will raise up for them my prophet, like you from among their brethren. And I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I commanded him. And it shall be that whoever will not hear my words, which he speaks to my name, I will require it of him. In other words, this prophet is going to speak the words of God, and anyone who does not do what this prophet says will be underjudgment from God.

There have been people who have tried to say that prophecy applies to them.

What does the Bible say? Now let's look at just what we've done. And what I'm doing is I'm showing you a thread that you could take the whole Bible and build on. You could spend the next six months studying this, and you would find prophecy after prophecy after prophecy, the purpose for Israel, the purpose for the church. There's all these things. Daniel 2 fits into this. This sets it up.

Okay. You followed Satan. I kicked you out of Eden. I'm going to fix it through the seed of a woman. Thousands of years later, Abraham comes along and he says, I'm going to bless everybody through you. Moses comes along as a descendant of Abraham, right? And God says, now you tell them, I'm going to send a prophet, and everybody's going to have to listen to it.

So we put the three together. How did the New Testament writers explain this? Let's go to Acts 3.

What we do in the New Testament sometimes, they expected their people to know the Scripture. This is why when Paul spoke to Gentiles in the Areopagus, he did not quote the Scripture. They would have had no idea what he was talking about. He quoted pagan poets. It's the only thing he had to use.

But you'll see where he did not quote the Scripture on numerous occasions. But whenever they're in a Jewish audience, they don't quote a lot of times verses. They quote pieces of verses. You know, the Old Testament is quoted at least 70 times in the book of Romans alone. But we don't recognize it. They're quoting little pieces of verses all the time. Everybody's expected to know what that means.

So let's look at Acts 3 starting in verse 11.

A great healing had just taken place. Peter and John got into them and healed a lame man. Verse 11 says, Now as the lame man who was healed held on to Peter and John, all the people ran together to them to the porch, which is called Solomon's, greatly amazed. This is a Jewish audience. They knew what the Scripture they had, which is the Old Testament. Nothing in the New Testament was written yet. The Gospels weren't written yet. Acts wasn't written yet. Nothing was written yet. So the only Scripture they had was the Old Testament.

Verse 13.

Now let's go to verse 12. So when Peter saw it, he responded to the people. Then of Israel, why do you marvel at this? Why do you look so intently at us, as though by our own power or godliness we made this man walk? The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of our fathers, glorified His servant Jesus. Now I want you to remember the word servant here, too. His servant Jesus, whom you delivered up and denied in the presence of Pilate, when he was determined to let him go, but you denied the Holy One and the just, and asked for a murderer to be granted to you and kill the Prince of Life, whom God raised from the dead, of which we are witnesses. He talks about how it's through this name of Jesus Christ, then, that this man is made healed. Verse 18 says, But those things which God foretold by the mouth of his prophets, that the Christ would suffer, he has thus fulfilled. Now I want you to remember that. Servant and the fact that the Christ would suffer. Because the Jews really had trouble putting together a Messiah who was King of Kings and a Messiah who suffered. How do you put that together? If all you had was the Old Testament, or is that something pretty hard on these people? If all you had was the Old Testament, how do you put that together? The Messiah, the Christ, would suffer. But he's the King of Kings. How does that work? We started Genesis 15, and we put it all together, and it explains it. He goes on, Repent therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, so the times of refreshment may come for the presence of the Lord, and that he may send Jesus Christ who was preached to you beforehand. He says, so he may send him back a second time, whom heaven must receive until the times of restoration of all things, which God has spoken by the mouth of all his prophets, since the world began. He says, I'm telling you the premise of prophecy. Since the world began, back in Genesis, since the world began, he said, I'm going to fix this through the suffering Messiah and the King of Kings. Now, I just went through something we could spend the whole sermon explaining, but I just wanted to set the context for what Peter says next. Verse 22, For Moses truly said to the fathers, The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brethren, him you shall hear in all things, whatever he says to you. And it shall be that every soul that will not hear that prophet shall be utterly destroyed from among the people. They will be judged. Where did we just read that? Now, when Moses said that to the people of Israel, they wouldn't have known what that meant. Who's this prophet? They had been waiting for the prophet for a long time, when Jesus shows up. And here Peter says, we were told the prophet was going to come. Not a prophet, because there's lots of prophets, but the prophet. That's what's so dangerous when people take Deuteronomy 18 and says it applies to them. They're stealing from Christ his prophecy, and that's a dangerous thing to do. That's a dangerous thing to do. Verse 24, yes, all the prophets from Samuel and those who follow, as many of us have spoken, have foretold of these days. He said, this is what prophecy is all about. This is the premise, how God's going to rectify, restore, the restoration of all things that says it's the restorative one. This is how God's going to restore everything. This is what he's doing. This is what he told us about. This is what he told all the prophets. This was what the minor prophets, you know, the minor prophets spoke to Judah and Israel and Edom and Egypt, but you look at the minor prophets, and you will find in every one of them this message.

To the world!

Isaiah, to the world! We'll go through a few passages, Lizzie.

And it all comes from that premise. He says, you are sons of the prophets, and of the covenant which God made with our fathers, saying to Abraham, now think about what we just read in Genesis 12, that all people were going to be blessed through Abraham, but he didn't say how.

How did Peter say? How did Peter understand? What was it Peter inspired to write or to say to these people? Saying to Abraham, in your seed all the families of the earth shall be blessed. Who's he talking about here? The whole subject of this passage is Jesus Christ.

He said, He's the prophet that Moses told, and let's go back a step. He is the one that is said unto Abraham, that all people will be blessed. To you first, he tells those people, God having raised up his servant Jesus, the word servant again, said him to bless you and turn everyone of you away from your iniquities. He said, you're receiving the blessing. Now these people would already receive the physical blessings of Abraham.

They were now being given the spiritual blessings of Abraham, the blessings that go to all people, which is a whole lot more than the land of Israel. It's salvation.

So now we begin to see, wait a minute, this Genesis 3.15 is the foundation of everything.

And the New Testament writers saw that. They were inspired to see that. Let's go through a few other places to show you what I mean. Let's go to Psalm 2. Psalm 2.

So you're with me so far? Okay, yeah. Like I said, it's not new. I just want to show you how it fits in the context and how the Bible is constructed.

Because I wouldn't know what Genesis 3.15 was in history if I didn't have all this other information. I wouldn't know how God was going to bless all the nations in Genesis 12. I wouldn't know who the prophet is in Deuteronomy 18, except the Bible. It shows us. What's amazing is in the prophecies of the New Testament where you see them saying, look, all these prophecies are fulfilled in Christ except the ones about His Second Coming. So then they stress His Second Coming. Why are they stressing His Second Coming? Because you'll see the arguments of the New Testament almost always start with the prophecies about His First Coming have already happened. And so they'll quote the Old Testament. And look, this has happened. And then they'll go on to say, now the next step is He's going to come back so we've got to be prepared for it. And you'll see that pattern throughout the New Testament over and over and over again.

Let's go to Psalm 2.

Now, there are Jews who say this is a messianic prophecy. There are Jews who say it refers to David. There are some real problems in applying this to David in that there's grandiose statements here that never were achieved in the life of David.

Besides, there's...well, let's just start in verse 1. Why do the nations rage and the people plot in vain? The kings of the earth sent themselves and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against His anointed, saying, Let us break their bonds of pieces and cast away their cords from us.

His anointed. Now, you'll find many people in the Old Testament, New Testament, ordained into positions of prophet or elder or pastor or king or Levitical priest, and they are ordained and they are anointed. Hands are laid on them, and they're anointed into that position. But this is the anointed, just like there's the prophet, okay? This is especially...and you say, Well, how do you know that?

Because of the context. In this context of this anointed, He does something different than any other anointed. By the way, the Hebrew word is Messiah, for anointed. So this is the Lord and His Messiah. Okay, well, Genesis 3.15, Genesis 12, we've got the prophet of Deuteronomy, we've got this anointed, and they're all certain of... You see, they're all doing the same thing. They're bringing about God's restoration of bringing humanity back to Him. I'm trying to figure out how much to read here because I only have an hour and a half other material.

He who sits in the heavens shall laugh, the Lord shall hold them in derision. Then he shall speak to them in his wrath and distress them in his deep displeasure. Yet I have set my King on my holy hill of Zion.

So this anointed one is also King. Now we have Servant, and we have King, and we have Messiah. Now, the rest of this chapter talks about how this King will rule on earth and how the nations will try to keep him from his kingdom and how he will set up his kingdom. So we have a worldwide kingdom, which, by the way, of course that never happened under the reign of David.

We have a worldwide kingdom over the nations. In fact, it says the nations in here are his inheritance. David was never given the nations as an inheritance. He was given Israel as an inheritance. So here we have this anointed one.

Now how is this used? Let's get a look and read all of them. Read all of Psalm 2, and you'll see, wow, this person is going to rule. This person is God's anointed. He is his Messiah. How is this used in the New Testament? Well, let's go to Acts 4. Acts 4. And let's pick it up in verse 23.

What happens here is, once again, John and Peter had performed a miracle. The Jewish leaders brought them in and accused them of all kinds of things and threatened them if they had to stop teaching about this Jesus Christ. They had to stop teaching that he was the Messiah. Of course, that's what Christ means, it's the Messiah. So, I know some people think that his name was Christ. That's his title. His name was Jesus Mark Joseph. Jesus son of Joseph. Or Yeshua bar Joseph.

The son of Joseph. Christ is his title. It means Messiah. All Christ is is the Greek word for Messiah. So, here we have now John and Peter, they are threatened for teaching about that Jesus is the Messiah. He is the fulfillment of the Scriptures. And it says, verse 23, they let them go and they went to their own companions and reported all that the chief priests and elders had said to them.

So, when they heard that, they raised their voice to God with one accord and said, Lord, you are God who made heaven and earth and the sea and all that is in them. So, this is the response to Peter and John being persecuted and then coming back to the brethren of the church. Now, here is the proof of what they're doing. Who by the word of your servant David have said, Why did the nations rage and the people plot vain things? The kings of the earth took their stand and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord and against His Christ.

Anointed. They use Psalm 2 to prove this is what God is doing through Jesus Christ. Now, Jesus Christ didn't rule the earth yet, but He had taken His place at the right hand of God to come back and rule the earth. But see how they use? That's why there are some Jewish rabbis who say that Psalm 2 is messianic and some say it's not. New Testament writers said, Yes. And apply this specifically to Jesus Christ. See, see how once we look at the premise, we're now building the entire foundation.

Now, there's lots of other prophecy about all kinds of things, but it always is built on this premise. It comes from the proto-Evangelium. It's one of the few Greek words I know, so I like to use it.

Isaiah 11. Isaiah 11. Now, I'm not going to go through the whole prophecy here, but Isaiah 11, like I said, I usually don't try to fill a sermon with this many scriptures, but I want you to get an overview of the context here. Isaiah 11, verses 1-12 is all about this person who's going to rule for God, and that he is a descendant of David.

There shall come forth a rod for the stem of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. Now, once again, what does that mean, except you have to know that Jesse is the father of David? The Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge, and the fear of the Lord. The rest of this tells what God's going to do through him.

Verse 10 says, And then they shall be a root of Jesse, because you shall stand as a banner for the people, for the Gentile shall seek him, and his resting place shall be glorious. Part of the problem with Israel is that they saw the covenant God made with them, and they tended to have this belief that God was exclusively for them.

But if you start with the Sinai covenant, you can come to that conclusion. If you start with Genesis 3.15 and Genesis 12, you realize this is for all you need. Israel existed because God had to bring about the Messiah. Now, that's an interesting thing, too. To go through all the prophecies of what God had to do to make sure Mary and Joseph were in right where they were supposed to be when the Messiah was supposed to be born.

He had to do a lot through history to make sure that a small group of Jews were there when they were supposed to be. Why did he do that, Matt? Remember how many times he told him, I'm not doing this because you're great. I'm doing this for my name. Think about how many times he told Israel and Judah, I'm doing this for me because you people are not doing what you're supposed to do.

What was it he was doing? He was fulfilling what he told Adam and Eve he would do. And he carried it out all this time, got them where they were supposed to be. He had to do a lot of work to get them there to make sure there were Jews there. He had to do a lot of work to make sure there's Jews there now. Because when Christ comes back, they're supposed to be the citizens of Abraham there. But that's a whole other story. That's a whole other layer of prophecy. We're just talking about the foundation here.

Verse 12 also says that he will set up a banner for the nations. He's also going to assemble the outcasts of Israel and Judah. Now what's very interesting here is that this goes back, we will turn there, but you can write it down. 2 Samuel 7, 4-16. In 2 Samuel 7, God tells David, Psalm is going to connect you, and he's not going to do so good, but I am going to do something for you. Well, I even wrote down exactly what he said because I knew I would forget it. And your house and your kingdom shall be established forever before you.

Your throne shall be established forever. Somebody from David's lineage, not Solomon, he told him, He told him, He won't be Solomon. He was going to be established forever as king. So here we find in Isaiah 11, this goes back to 2 Samuel. And 2 Samuel goes back to Genesis 12. It's step by step what God is doing. How is this quoted in the New Testament? Let's go to Romans 15. Romans 15. Now this is typical Pauline, the way Paul would do things. I say that Peter did the same thing. Romans. And I'm shocked that he did this to the church in Rome because a lot of the Roman church would have been Gentile.

He does the same thing in 1 Corinthians, which was primarily Gentile. We know it from what he says to them. And yet he quotes the Bible, not like we do. You know, I mean, you think about it, I just don't pull a verse out. We read the context that, he just pulled a verse out, or part of the verse. You people are supposed to know the context. They were supposed to know their Bible. Romans 15, verse 8. Now I say that Jesus Christ has become a servant.

The word servant is very important. Servants are the circumcision for the truth of God to confirm the promises made to the fathers, who were the fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He says, understand what's going on here, folks. You've got to go clear back to Abraham. You've got to go clear back to what God's doing all along. And remember, Genesis 12 is the next step in Genesis 3.15. And that the Gentiles might glorify God for His mercy, as it is written. He says, now remember, what God did to Abraham was for the whole world, not just Israel.

And then, he just starts whipping out verses and parts of verses from all over the Old Testament. For this reason, I will confess to you, among the Gentiles, and sing your name. And again, he says, rejoice, O Gentiles, with His people. And again, praise the Lord, all you Gentiles, all on Him and all you peoples. You have to go find that. Those are throughout the Old Testament. And again, Isaiah says, now he actually says, this is in Isaiah. This is what's real important. There shall be a root of Jesse, and he who shall rise to reign over the Gentiles.

To him the Gentiles shall hope. Now, where did we just read that? Now, I know you'll say, this is slightly different than what we read in Isaiah. It's the same meaning, but slightly different. Well, there's a reason. Isaiah is translated from Hebrew. Right? This was originally written in Greek, and they quoted the Septuagint, which is the Greek version of the Bible. So you're getting a translation of a translation of a translation. The meaning is there, but it is slightly different. If you saw a translation of the Septuagint, it's almost exactly the same.

Well, he's writing to the Romans. They didn't speak Hebrew, but did they speak Latin and Greek? So he wrote, he quoted from the Septuagint, because that's what they would have had available. So that's why you'll find all through the New Testament, sometimes, verses. You go back and read it in the Old Testament, you'll say, well, that's slightly different. Yeah. Well, there's a reason why you're reading a translation of a translation. But the meaning is always there. That's what's amazing. That's what makes this book amazing. The meaning is always there. So here we see, once again, he takes Isaiah 11 and says, this is Jesus Christ. Isaiah 52.

I don't want to spend a lot of time there, because this is really a sermon in itself. Isaiah 52 and 53 is about the suffering servant. Now, understand this servant. I mean, if you go to Isaiah 42, verses 1-9, it talks about the servant. And you go read the servant, you go, oh, wait a minute, this is the anointed. This is the king. It's not just a servant. There's lots of servants. But this servant's different. He rules. He saves the nations.

So what we have in Isaiah 52, starting in verse 13 through all of chapter 53, is the suffering servant. And it's one of the most profound passages in Isaiah. What's amazing about Isaiah? You can take all the elements of the Gospel in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and you will find every one of them in Isaiah. It is absolutely amazing. Every element of the Gospel contained in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John is contained in Isaiah. But in Isaiah 52 and 53, starting in verse 13-52, you have the suffering servant. And this is why, to this day, there are certain of the Orthodox Jews who think there are two messiahs.

One is king, but this one suffers. He is beaten. He is spit upon, and he is killed. And then he's resurrected. God says, I will appoint him among the greats. He will be the greatest. He is prophesied to be resurrected. And it says in here, by his stripes, you are healed. Have you read that in the New Testament? Of course you have. Isaiah 52 and 53 are quoted throughout the New Testament as proof as Jesus is the Messiah.

That there are two comings, and that's what we understand that's so profound. There's one Messiah who comes twice. Now, we haven't even talked about the divinity of Jesus. That's a whole other subject. That's proven, by the way, in Isaiah 2. The divinity of Jesus Christ is proven in the book of Isaiah. We can do a whole sermon on that something. Well, as we go through the basic doctrine, Bible studies, pretty soon we're getting into the divinity of Jesus.

So we'll go through that. But what you have here is the New Testament writers are inspired by God to look back and say, Ah, He's the suffering Messiah! He's the suffering servant! He comes back as King the second time. And boy, they start giving a strong message about Christ coming back as King. But it's always in the context of the first coming. We cannot preach the first coming and not the second coming.

But we can't preach the second coming and not the first coming. You've got to preach both! Because Genesis 3.15, the foundation requires that we do so. It requires that we put all this together to see what God is doing. So I won't go through Isaiah 52 and 53, but do a study on that.

That is just absolutely amazing. Maybe we'll go through that before the Passover. That is really a Passover sermon. Boy, you guys decided to just let me know so I won't prepare one. But you want to even decide, hey, I want to do that, then do it. Just let me know. Isaiah 61. This was really interesting. Isaiah 61. See, these are all scriptures, you know. I just can put them together. The picture is so amazing. We don't start in Ezekiel. We don't start in Daniel.

We don't start in Revelation. We don't start in all that prophecy. Those build off of something else. The clarity of those prophecies when you do this is amazing. Verse 1, The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me because the Lord has anointed me. So here is someone who is anointed, and here is what he is anointed to do to preach good tidings to the poor. He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and open the prisons of those who are abound, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.

And then the next sentence is very important. And the day of vengeance of our God. In other words, he has come to bring all this comfort and all this goodness and this good news, good tidings. Here he is to bring this good news. But he says, I'm also to tell people about the judgment of God. That the day of wrath and to proclaim it. Verse 2 says, And to comfort those who mourn, to console those who mourn in Zion, that give them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the Spirit of heaviness, that they may be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he may be glorified.

So here is someone anointed by God to bring this remarkable message.

How is this used in the New Testament? Let's go to Luke chapter 4.

There's something subtle that happens here in the way this verse is used.

Verse 16. Jesus comes, let's talk about Jesus. So He came to Nazareth where He had been brought up as His custom was. And He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day and stood up to read. He was handed the book of the prophet Isaiah. So, you know, He is considered in the Jewish community, you know, people, once you had a certain honor, you could get up and you could read for the book. And you could talk about it. And then there was the Rabbi or the leader of the synagogue who would be sort of what we would call a pastor today. So He gets up and He opens it up deliberately because we've seen it from what He says.

And when He had opened the book, He found the place where it was written. So He finds it, He turns to it, and this is what He reads. The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me because He has anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent Me to heal a brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and a recovery of sight to the blind. The Senate Liberty, those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. He read what we just read. And then He stops. He actually stops with an old sentence. He closed the book, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. And all the eyes of the synagogue were fixed on Him. Wow, that's an amazing passage. Aren't you going to tell us what it means?

And He began to say to them, Today, this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.

I'm the one. I'm the anointed. I'm here to give you this good news. Now, you notice He stopped just before finishing the sentence, which talks about the day of wrath, the day of vengeance. He brings that later. He brings the day of wrath, right? We celebrate that with the Feast of Trumpets every year. He brings the day of wrath later. He stopped in the middle. He says, I'm just here to bring you this news. You read through the discussion. By the end of His discussion of this in the synagogue, they tried to kill Him. Why? Because it was such bad news? No, because He had just said, I'm the Messiah. I'm the servant. I'm the King. I'm the One. You ever saw the movie The Matrix? I don't recommend it. It's about the guy who says he's the One. Everybody says he's the One. He's the One? I'm it? And it just infuriated. How dare they even call it? Is it this, the carpenter's kid? Oh yeah, that's the kid that was illegitimate, remember? He's going nuts. He thinks he's the Messiah. Well, you know, maybe we'd better kill a crazy...maybe it's demon possessed. They weren't accusing of being demon possessed. They tried to kill him. And he just read you guys' hands, says I'm the One. That was early in his ministry. It got worse since I went on. So he came. Satan would bruise his heel. He would bruise Satan's head. When Jesus was crucified, Satan thought he'd won. He had bruised the seed of the woman. And then he was resurrected. And Jesus stepped on his head. Look at Hebrews 2. Hebrews 2. We just scratched the surface of building this foundation. Once you do this, like I said, all other prophecies begin to build off of it. And we begin to understand more and more what God is doing because this is the purpose. This is why God is doing all these things. This is why God gives prophecy. Hebrews 2.14 He stepped right on his head, figuratively speaking, because Satan thinks somehow. I guess every human being he dies, he thinks he wins. And when Jesus died, he won. He had bruised the heel of the Messiah. And then he was resurrected. And he says, he broke his power. Now, he still has a time as the God of this world. You and I live in the time when he's still the God of this world. And I guarantee you, between now and when Jesus Christ comes down, he's going to get more and more desperate. This world's going to come apart. He's going to get his anger and his desperation because he's coming back to step on me. When Jesus comes back, now we can look at Revelation and all of a sudden it ties right back in in Genesis 3.15. When Jesus comes back, he binds Satan. Then he releases him for a little bit. And then he says, that's it. You're in outer darkness. I don't know where he puts him, but he's gone. He can't influence God's creation again. He's gone forever. He's crushing his head. He wins this. And Satan must have known when he was resurrected. I can't win. Well, he's insane. So who knows what he thinks? I keep applying same thought to a being who's insane.

I don't know what he thinks. But the moment he was resurrected, it's all over. God says, look, I could even beat death. You have no idea what I could do. I could even destroy death. Remember, Jesus just wasn't any guy. He came from heaven down here. He was very interesting. When Christ comes back, we get to help him defeat Satan. It says in Revelation, he brings armies with him. He brings armies with him. Those who are clothed in white, the resurrected saints come back. And Paul makes this one interesting statement, just out of nowhere in the Bible. And yet, when coupled with Revelation, it's fascinating. Romans 16.

Romans 16.

Verse 20. This is Paul's writing to the church here. And the God of peace will crush Satan under your feet shortly. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. When we come back, or when Christ comes back, the resurrected and changed saints are with him. We get to support. We're there with Christ as he takes Satan and he crushes him. The imagery of him stepping on his head. You remember one time, some of us were at camp, and some of the kids had never seen a rattlesnake. And I'm standing there talking about this rattlesnake, you know, as a staff member. Of course, I had tennis shoes on. I wasn't going to do anything at that point. One of the guys walked over with great big Texas boots on and stepped on his head. We were like, well, why did you do that? We were walking at him, you know. Did I eat snakes? No. So, you know, to step on a snake's head with a boot. Yes. Does he no good? And that's the imagery here. Is Christ taking the heel of his, which he's bitten, thinking he's killed him. And he takes the heel of his boot and just crushes his head. That's the imagery. And he says he's going to crush him under our feet. We're with Christ when he does this. This adversary is removed from our lives forever. Isn't it interesting that he put it that way? You're going to be part of the crushing of saying, now you and I don't get to do that alone. We follow Christ and Christ does it. He's the instrument. But we're right there with him. We're right there with him as our adversary is crushed and bound up. And Genesis 3.15 is fulfilled. See? So now you know. You can go home and say, proto-Evangelium. Actually, if you tried to say it in Greek, it's so fast I can't say it. I can't pronounce it correctly. But you know what it means. The first good news. It is the starting point of all prophecy. And we just scratched the surface of how you can put this together. How you can take all these prophecies of the Old Testament and read it of the New Testament and they explain what it means. It always has to do with the first and second coming of the Messiah. We have seen and put together that the seed of the woman is a divine being who is the prophet and the servant and the king. And as David said, if you read all of Psalm 2, the Son of God, he comes twice. Isaiah 52 and 53. What's to suffer for us, for all humanity, and the second time to crush Satan and set up God's kingdom on this earth? You know what? That really is Evangelion. That really is good news.