Foundation of Prophecy

Let me ask you something. Let's think about this. What is the most central prophecy in the entire Bible? If someone said to you, I want to know what prophecy is all about, I want you to go to one prophecy, and that defines all the others. You ever thought about that? Where would it be? Where's the starting point, the template, that says, okay, this defines the purpose and plan for all prophecy?

Where would you go? Well, some people say, well, it may have to be all of that prophecy. That was Christ's great prophecy. It has to be there. Others would say, no, you've got to start Ezekiel. You would start there. No, no, you would start Daniel.

Some would say, ah, we have to start in Revelation. But all prophecy is built on a foundation. What is the one place you would go to say this is the foundation of all prophecy? We're going to look at that today, and what we do, we're going to go back and forth between some Old Testament prophecies and how they're explained in the New Testament. Because the truth is, there are Old Testament prophecies that you and I would not know how to interpret except through the New Testament.

In fact, many Orthodox Jews have a totally different explanation of these prophecies than we do because they don't have the New Testament to go to. So where do we start? Well, to begin the discussion, let's go to Genesis chapter 3. You know the story here. Today is more like a Bible study than a sermon. We're going to run through a bunch of scriptures. And in some cases, I'm going to read a verse and then tell you the rest of the context. You have to read it yourself.

So you're going to have to do a little work here when you go home tonight. But I want to set a foundation. A couple months ago, right before the feast, I gave a sermon on why study Bible prophecy. I thought, well, you know, I'd like to at least once every two or three months give a prophecy sermon. So I had all these prophecy sermons I was going to give, and I had all these ideas. I thought, you know what? No, no. We're just going to go and start at the very beginning of, this is when all prophecy is built on.

This is it. Now, we know the story here. Satan, who comes in the form of a serpent, deceives Eve to disobey God. She goes and convents her husband, and he disobeys God. Immediately, they're filled with shame and fear and guilt, and their lies fall apart. They try to hide from God. So God comes along and says, okay, you did no obey me. This is going to be the result of you not obeying me.

You have set in motion now, because he told them, if you don't do what I say, you're going to set in motion death. Now, they didn't even know what death was. They'd never seen it. He explained it to them, but I'm not sure they would have actually understood it. He tells them that. And then in verse 14 of Genesis 3, so the Lord God said to the serpent, because you have done this, you are cursed more than cattle, more than every beast of the field.

On your belly you shall go, and you shall eat dust all the days of your life. And I will put enmity to you and the woman, between your seed and her seed, he shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel. Now, we know that, yes, this actual snake was cursed, but we also realize this has to do with Satan, who had used the snake. So this is a curse ultimately on Satan himself.

Verse 16, to the woman he said, I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception, and pain you shall bring forth to children, your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you. In other words, he said, you're going to deteriorate now, you weren't designed to live in the world that now you're going to have to live in. And the result is childbirth itself is going to become very stressful and painful. It must have been pretty easy. It must have been pretty easy.

But she didn't know that. She never had a child yet. And he said, this is going to get real hard, and this relationship between you and her husband, it's not going to work very well. And this isn't just on Eve. He's telling all her daughters, you're going to have trouble, because your body's going to deteriorate. You know, they were in absolute perfect health.

But their body's going to begin to deteriorate now, and then we're going to have problems from that, and then we have huge relationship problems. He goes on, 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. Cursed is the ground for your sake. He said, you have no idea I sustained this world. There were no hurricanes. There were no tornadoes. There were no tsunamis. He said, I control this. He says, it's yours now. And it's going to be cursed. This is going to be horrible. Your own environment is going to kill your descendants. In Troyal, you shall eat of it all the days of your life, both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you. And you shall eat the herb of the field and the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground. For out of it you were taken, for dust you are, and to dust you shall return. Verse 24. So he drove out the man. God drove them out of Eden. And he placed caribim at the end of the garden of Eden, or at the east of the garden of Eden, and a flaming sword which turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life. That's pretty bad news, isn't it?

I mean, that just... there's no hope in that. It seems like there's no hope there. That is about as bad a news as you could ever tell anybody. And in the middle of that is some good news. Look at it. Anybody want to tell me what verses the good news?

15. In Greek, there's actually a title for this verse. Okay, this is 315. It's called the Proto-Evangelium. It's a big worry. Oh, wow, what's that mean? Proto is a prefix. We use it all the time in English, right? Proto-type is the first. Evangelium means good news. In Greek, this verse is called the first good news.

Because in here is something that's not defined, but it is the basis. And I'll show you what I mean in a minute. It's the basis of all prophecy. 16. Verse 15, I will put enmity between you and the woman, Satan and the woman, between your seed and her seed. There'll be a fight of good and evil through human history. But this seed, this person who's going to come from this woman shall bruise the head of Satan. But Satan will bruise his heel. Now, if that's all I had, I couldn't even guess what that means. But it's not all we have. This becomes the focal point for everything God does from this point on.

This is the basis of God's plan. And as we go through it, you'll see it's there, which is, I've thrown you out of Eden, but I will send a descendant of Eve that will fix this, because you can't defeat Satan. You can't get out of this yourself. So I will send somebody who will do this. The rest of prophecy is an explanation of how God's doing it. All the rest of prophecy is an explanation of how God's going to do what He said here. Now, the only reason I know that is because of the rest of the Bible. Adam and Eve wouldn't have known that, because it's a statement that's broad. It's so broad, what does it mean? So let's start working through some things. You know, if you look through the rest of Genesis here for the next few chapters, you see all these things happening. You see, humanity get worse and worse. You see God bring a flood upon them. And then you see Abraham come along, and God makes this remarkable promise to Abraham. Now, two weeks ago when I talked about the blessing, the blessing of Abraham, I read this, but let's go back to it. Genesis 12.

Genesis 12.1 Nothing new today. Okay? Nothing new. But I want to put it in a context that will help you understand what Mr. McCrory was talking about so you can find what he was talking about.

So you can search and find it. It's there. But this is the context in which we can do that. verse 1 God will bless you, 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. This is a universal blessing. It's not just Israel. This is so important Support to understand. Sometimes when you read through the prophecies, you get so locked into Israel, Israel is a purpose. And Israel's purpose is because of Genesis 3.15. It isn't the focal point. It's part of the journey of where God arrives. That's important to you. So here he says, all nations. This is for everyone. This is for the world. But how does that blessing take place? If this is all I have, I don't know. I don't know. Somehow everybody gets blessed because of Abraham and his seed. But we have to be honest, if I have no other scripture, I don't know what it means. Okay, everybody gets blessed through Abraham. Now I'm going to jump ahead a few centuries. In a minute, I'm going to bring this into a focus. So let's jump ahead a few centuries to the time of Moses. And let's go to Deuteronomy 18. Deuteronomy 18. Moses is a descendant of Abraham. And Moses is unique in his relationship with God and how God is using him as a leader. And here's what Moses is told to tell the Israelites, the descendants of Abraham. The Lord your God, verse 15 of Deuteronomy 18. The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your midst, from your brethren, him you shall hear, a prophet like Moses. Unique, a leader. According to all you desired of your Lord, your God in Horeb, in the day of the assembly, saying, let me not hear again the voice of the Lord my God, nor let us see this great fire any more lest I die. And the Lord said to me, what they have spoken is good. So Moses said, let's go back. Remember when we were at the bottom of Mount Sinai and God was at the top of the mountain and there was thunder and lightning and it was shaking and the people said, whoa, Moses, you go talk to him. This is too great for us. And Moses went up and God said, okay, I'll talk to them through you. He's saying, I will talk to them through another prophet. And this prophet's greater than Moses. Just notice what he says here. Verse 18, I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brethren. I will put my words in his mouth. He shall speak to them all that I command him. And it shall be that whoever will not hear my words which he speaks of my name, I will require it of him. In other words, those who don't listen to this prophet are judged by God. We seem to have three disjointed things, but we're going through thousands of years of history here. We have a promise of the seed of the woman that's going to help overthrow Satan. We have all the families who are going to be blessed by somehow, by Abraham. And here we have a prophet that everybody has to listen to. There are people, there are men who have taken this and applied it to themselves. That somehow they're this prophet.

How do we know whether that's true or not? Let's look at how, and we're going to do this, go back and forth between prophecies in the Old Testament and the New Testament explanation. How they interpret this, inspired by God's Spirit in the New Testament. Let's go to Acts 3. Acts 3.

What we have here is John and Peter. God uses them to perform a remarkable healing. And it's a public healing. So everybody sees this healing. Verse 11, now as the lame man who was healed held on to Peter and John, all the people ran together to them in the porch, which is called Solomon's, greatly amazed. It's important to understand here, they are the Jewish temple.

This is a Jewish audience. When Paul talked to Gentile audiences that did not know the Scripture, he dealt with them differently. But Paul, Peter does this, but Paul really doesn't. When they spoke to Jewish audiences, they just grabbed pieces of Scripture and just threw them out. Everybody was supposed to know the context. I'll show you a little bit how he really does it. Everybody was supposed to know the context. Everybody was supposed to know what he was quoting. In the book of Romans alone, Paul quotes the Old Testament 70 times. Most of the places he quotes it, people don't even recognize it.

He's pulling out a sentence here, a sentence there, but the Jewish audience knew it. So let's look at what they do here. Verse 12. So Peter saw it and he responded to the people, men 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. I want you to think servant because we're going to come back to servant. Servant is a very important word here. His servant Jesus, who 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 a just and asked for a murderer to be granted to you and killed the Prince of Life, of whom God raised from the dead, of which we are witnesses.

It goes on and talks about how God's going to do things through the name of Jesus Christ. Verse 18, But those things which God foretold by the mouth of all His prophets, that the Christ would suffer, He has thus fulfilled. This is for Corey said they struggled, the Jews struggled over the suffering part of the Messiah. Isaiah 52, 53. To this day, some Orthodox Jews believe there's two Messiahs. One who suffers, and one who comes as King of Kings.

They can't figure out how that fits together. How does that work? Here he says, well, He's the suffering servant. Remember, servants remember suffering here. These are important concepts. He says, verse 19, Repent therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, so at the times of refreshing may come for the presence of the Lord, that He may send Jesus Christ who was preached to you before. He may send Jesus the Christ. Remember, Christ is a title. His name wasn't Jesus Christ. It would have been probably Yeshua, Yeshua, depending on what it's Aramaic or Hebrew, Bar of Joseph. Yeshua Bar Joseph. Yes, Jesus, Son of Joseph. That was His name.

Christ is a title. So He says, this is very important when He uses this title. Jesus the Messiah, Christ is the word Messiah in Greek, was preached to you before, who 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. Now, I've just gone through all this Acts 3, because now I'm going to get to my point. But I wanted to show you the context. The context is, this is what prophecy is all about.

This is what all the prophets were trying to tell everybody. This is it. This is what all the prophets were all about. Verse 23, where 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 who will not hear that prophet will be utterly destroyed from among the people. Oh, we suddenly know who the prophet is, don't we? We know what Deuteronomy 18 is all about. And all the prophets talked about this time, this prophet, not a prophet, is the prophet.

Now, let's go on. Yes, all the prophets from Samuel and those who follow, as many of us spoke and have foretold of these days, he said, this is it, guys. This is one of the focal points of prophecy. What's the complete focal point? Because he already said, he mentioned in verse 20 that, you know, he's got to send him back. He sent him, but he's now he's got to send him. So this is part of it, but this is one of the focal points. Verse 25, you are the sons of the prophets and of the covenant which God made with our fathers, saying to Abraham, the covenant made with Abraham gave this prophecy, and in your seed all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

What's the context of what we're talking about? Jesus Christ. Now, notice verse 26, for you first, to these descendants, physical descendants of Abraham, to you first, God, having raised up his servant Jesus, said, him to bless you. This is the blessing. He's the blessing. He's the seed of Abraham. Him to bless you and turning away every one of you from your iniquities. That's how Peter took Genesis 12 and Deuteronomy 18 and put them together. So, all we have to do now is take a step backwards. Oh, that's what Genesis 3.15 is about.

There you go. It's the proto-Evangelion. It's one of the few Greek words I know, so I like to say it a lot. Right? It's the first good news. It's the beginning of all prophecy. And the foundation is, I'm going to fix this through the seed of a woman. Now, there's a lot of other scriptures that talk about Christ's divinity. We're not going to go through Christ's divinity today because we're just going through these prophecies. As we're going through the doctoral classes or the doctoral Bible studies, we'll be talking about Christ's divinity here in the next couple of months. So, we'll be going through that. But right now, we're just veering in on the foundational prophecies and where we start. All prophecies go off of this foundation. Now, let's look at a few other prophecies and see how they're used in the New Testament. Psalm 2. Are you with me so far? Have I lost? Okay. Actually, there's nothing new here today, but this is important. And the reason I say that is because in the church over the years, I have seen more wacko prophecy. I taught wacko prophecy.

That later you look at the Bible and say, well, that can't be true.

It's the context. We have to build this just like you do any other teaching. So, you know what starts. You'll hear me say this a thousand times. You've already heard me say it in the three months I've been here. Your premise is everything. Because you can be brilliant and logical if you start on the wrong premise, you still end up in the wrong place. Our premises have to be right. They have to be biblical. Psalm 2. Psalm 2 is greatly debated. Most Christians believe this is a messianic prophecy about Jesus. Many Orthodox Jews believe it's a messianic prophecy. Of course, not about Jesus. Others say it's not about Jesus at all. It's about David. Now, let's look at a few things here. Verse 1. Why do the nations rage and the people plot a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against his anointed, saying, Let us break their bonds in pieces and cast away their cords from us. The anointed. Anointed is where we get in Hebrew is the word Messiah. This is against the Lord and his Messiah. Okay, we see who the prophet is. See that. Everybody's blessed through the prophet. Now we have another title that comes up. He is the Messiah. The entire rest of this chapter is fascinating. Go home and read this. He's even called the Son.

He's the Son and he's the King. He's the Son and he's the King.

So, how do we interpret Psalm 2? Do we say, Well, it's messianic or it's not messianic. It's about David. Although you never see David, one of the things in here, it says the nations are his inheritance. You don't see David given by God all the nations. He's given Israel.

To this anointed, to this Messiah, I don't remember, there's lots of anointed people in the Scripture. I mean, David was anointed king. They laid hands on him, declared him king. But this isn't anointed. This is the anointed. That's not what the Hebrew, the A and the D isn't there. I'm talking about in English. This is the anointed. So, how do we interpret this? How do we decide what this means? Let's go to Acts 4. Acts 4.

1 Peter 1 Peter 1 Once again, Peter and John perform a great miracle. God performs a miracle through them. They get in trouble. They get dragged before the Jewish leaders. They threaten them. They send them out. And so if we pick this up in verse 23, and being let go, this is John and Peter, 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, and with one accord said, so this is the response to what the Jewish leaders have done with Peter and John, Lord, you are God who made heaven and earth, and the sea, and it all has hid them, who by the mouth of your servant David has said, why did the nations rage and the people plot vain things? The kings of the earth took their stand, the rulers were gathered together against the Lord and against His Christ. Oh, well, we just read that.

They took Psalm 2, and look at verse 27. They quoted here, just two verses, or a couple of verses of it, but in Psalm 2, verse 27, verse 27, for truly against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the people of Israel, were gathered together.

So here they look at this, and they say, ah, this Jesus, the servant Jesus, is this one, this mention in Psalm 2.

Okay. Let's see. As we start going through these, and I'm just cherry picking. There's dozens and dozens of prophecies we can go through. I'm just cherry picking. It's so obvious, and one of the reasons it's obvious is because they give an explanation to the New Testament. You can do this, too. You can go through all these prophecies, look up where their quote is in the New Testament. Ah, that's how they're interpreted.

We have a different interpretation. Our interpretation comes from the apostles. They come from Jesus himself and from the apostles. That's our interpretation of the Old Testament.

That's why we know these things. Isaiah 11.

Once again, I'm just going to read a few verses here. Isaiah 11, verses 1-12.

It's a fairly long prophecy that unless you know a few things, it makes no sense.

Verse 1 says, There shall come forth a rod for the stem of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. What in the world does that mean?

The Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel with might, the Spirit of knowledge, and the fear of God. It goes on and talks about all this greatness that's going to come from this person. Verse 10 says, Everybody, all nations, all people, all tribes.

It even says in verse 12 that he will set up a banner for the nations, and he will actually gather again the outcasts of Israel and Judah together into one nation. Wow! He's going to do a lot.

If you go through Scripture, there's two things here that it's pretty easy to find out. One is Jesse is the father of David, and David is a descendant of Abraham. But also, when you go to 2 Samuel, chapter 7, verses 4 through 16, God makes a covenant with David.

He tells him, Solomon's going to do some great things, but Solomon's going to fail.

Solomon's going to fail, but I'm going to promise you something.

What he promises him in verse 16 is, so he tells David, one of your descendants is going to rule forever.

One of your descendants is going to rule forever. So how do the New Testament writers take Isaiah 11 in interpretive force?

Romans 15. So are you still with me?

I know sometimes when you're going through this many Scriptures, it can be a little, after a while it's like you get lost.

But there's times to give a sermon with three Scriptures, there's times to give a sermon with 15 Scriptures.

Romans 15, verse 8.

Let's look at the context here. Now, I say that Jesus Christ has become a servant to the circumcision for the truth of God to confirm the promises made to the fathers. He's the servant to confirm the promises made to the fathers. Who are the fathers? Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. We're back to Genesis 12.

We can't get away from Genesis 3.50. We can't get away from Genesis 12. We can't get away from Deuteronomy 18. It just expands out.

And we skipped a lot of things in between here. A lot of prophecies. What's amazing about Isaiah is if you take all the gospel components, and Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, they're all in Isaiah. Isaiah is a remarkable book. It's the only place in the Old Testament I can find where all the components of the gospel are taught like the New Testament. Everybody else has bits and pieces, but God gave Isaiah all of it. It's amazing. Now, verse 9, and that the Gentiles might glorify God for His mercy, and as written, Paul's argument here is what we're doing here is following prophecy, and the prophecy is to all nations. And now he just starts cherry picking all kinds of things out of the Old Testament. For this reason, I will confess to you among the Gentiles and sing your name. I'm not even sure what that is. I'd have to go look it up. And again, he says, Rejoice, O Gentiles, with your people. Oh, okay. I've got to find that one. And again, praise the Lord, all you Gentiles, laud Him, all you peoples. He just picketh things out of the Old Testament and is laying it out there. And then verse 12, and again, Isaiah says, oh good, at least we know what book he's in. Can you imagine if I got up here and just quoted Bible verses all over the place and you have no idea where it is?

That's fall for you. But now he says, as Isaiah said, look at the rest of verse 12, There shall be a root of Jesse, and he who shall rise up to reign over the Gentiles, to him the Gentiles shall hope. You know, this is all one sentence.

Well, I guess it's not. There's a break. Well, it's one sentence in Greek. There's no punctuation. But the whole thought starts in verse 8 and goes through verse 12. And what is the subject? Verse 8, now I say that Jesus Christ has become. That's the subject.

And he ends this little discourse about, it actually goes on, but I mean this section of thought with Isaiah told us this.

Isaiah said he'd come from David.

So here we have, once again, where this Old Testament prophecies are explained in the New Testament, so explicit, I don't have to speculate about anything. And this becomes the focal point of all prophecy. There's other prophecies we have to speculate about. We have to speculate about this one.

Because the first and second coming of Jesus Christ is what God is doing to reconcile all humanity to Him. He's fixing Genesis 3, and all other prophecy is about how He's doing it.

Everything else is about how He's doing it.

Isaiah 42, we won't go there, but Isaiah 42, verses 1 through 9 talks about the servant. Now there's lots of people called servants of God in the Bible, but this servant's different. God does things through this servant He doesn't do through anybody else. That's why He said you had to know this in the New Testament. Why do they call Him the servant Jesus Christ? Because prophetically, He's declared the servant, just like He's declared the Messiah, just like He's declared the prophet, just like He's declared the King of Kings. That's who He is. Now there's lots of kings, a lot of prophets, and lots of servants, but there's only one of these servants. So we go to Isaiah 42 and we look at that and say, ah, that's prophecy about the servant. That God does things through He doesn't do through anybody else. That's it. You have to look at the context. When He does these things through this person, it can't be done through anybody else. Then you're looking at Messianic prophecies.

That brings us to something that Mr. McCrory mentioned. I'm not going to go there myself, but Isaiah 52 and 53. Isaiah 52, 13 through 52, Isaiah 52, 13 through 53, 12 is a sermon in itself.

I may give one before passing. If any of you guys decide to give a sermon on Isaiah 52 and 53, let me know so I won't do it. But it's not a bad idea to cover this before the passage. We're split-sermon on it.

Isaiah 52 and 53 says, this is my suffering servant.

It's like, well, who's that? We know who the servant is. He's the king. He's the prophet. He's the Messiah. Who's the suffering servant? The suffering servant that God says that he will resurrect and make him the mighty one.

What do you mean he's going to resurrect him?

So we have a real interesting problem here. And you read through Isaiah 52 and 53, and there's where he says, well, by his stripes you are healed. Have you ever heard that in the New Testament? Peter says it.

Only Peter says it different. Isaiah says, by his stripes you are healed. Peter said, by his stripes you were healed.

Well, he's quoted... If you look at Peter, the first Peter where he's talking about it, he's talking about Jesus Christ. And he takes Isaiah 52 and 53 and says, this is him. He's also the suffering servant. You think, where in the world... You know, we read just a few minutes ago where Paul says... Or Peter says about... This is all the prophecies about the suffering that the Messiah must go through. And it's like, well, where does come from?

All the prophecies, what he reads is about being a prophet and about being king. And, ah, there are prophecies. I don't have any of my notes, but they're songs... This is what we're talking about in Psalms.

But they will pierce him.

There's even prophecies about being crucified long before anybody crucified. Long before there were nations that used that as a form of punishment.

So there are the messages of the suffering servant.

One more prophecy, then I would just cover a couple quick things in the New Testament. But Isaiah 61...

I find this one very interesting, how it's used in the New Testament. Isaiah 61. Verse 1. The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me. So this person that he's talking about, and he said, well, is this Isaiah? Or is this somebody else? That's the question. Because he's been anointed, as he says here, anointed me to preach good tidies to the poor. He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are abound, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, the day of vengeance of our gods. And not only to proclaim all these good things, but to proclaim God's judgment, the day of vengeance when God judges the world.

So he's to bring this good news, plus the message of God's judgment, God's wrath upon the world. He says to comfort all who mourn, verse 3, to console those who mourn in Zion, to 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 this person is anointed for this incredible message. How is this passage used in the New Testament? Luke chapter 4. Luke chapter 4. We're going to start in verse 16.

This is Jesus Christ.

So he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And as his custom was, he went into the synagogue in the Sabbath day and stood up to read. And he was handed the book of the prophet of Isaiah. Now this would be normal. The man was standing in the community.

They could come up and read from the Torah.

Or, well, this wasn't the Torah here. This is the Tanakh, but they could read from the Bible. Remember, all they had was the Old Testament. There's nothing in the New Testament that's written. So they have this, and there would be the ruler of the synagogue, or the rabbi, who would give a sermon and perform these rituals. And then different people could get up and read. So he gets up, and they handed the book of Isaiah.

And when he had opened the book, he found the place. So he's looking for it. He searches through the book, and he finds the place where it is written. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He has anointed me. Oh, this is Isaiah 61. They knew exactly. I mean, He opens it up, and He starts reading this. Because He has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and recover of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.

Then he closes the book in the middle of a sentence. He closes the book, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all who were in the synagogue were fixed on him. We read from it. Isn't He going to give us some explanation? And notice His explanation. And He began to say to them, today, this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing. But notice what He's saying.

I'm the anointed one who's to bring this goodness. Now, what He skipped was the rest of the sentence that says that He is there to proclaim God's vengeance. That's His second coming.

He's going to do that. But He wasn't doing that at that point. He came and brought the message, I'm here to heal you. I'm here, basically, is what Genesis 3.15 says. I'm here to reverse what Satan has done to you in your lives. I'm here to reverse all this. I'm here to fix this.

They started asking Him some questions, and they got so upset with Him. If you read the rest of the passage, they tried to kill Him. That's a great way to start your ministry, because this is very early in His ministry. First time, you really get up and proclaim something important, and everybody tries to kill you.

And if you do that, I'm not coming back.

They tried to kill Him. They tried to kill Him.

Why did they try to kill Him? Because He read from Isaiah? Of course not.

It's because when He said that, He said, I'm Him. I'm the One. I'm the One.

And they said, if you read all of it, some of the people said, isn't this the carpenter's kid? You know somebody else said, yeah, he's the one who was illegitimate. She was pregnant before they got married, remember?

Remember? Oh, yeah. Think he's crazy? Probably. Maybe he's demon-possessed. We'd better kill him.

You'd have to be a crazy person to get up and say, I'm the One.

Like I said, there's people that take some of these prophecies, I'm the prophet.

No, you're not.

So, He proclaimed who He was.

So, we're back to Genesis 3.15.

The seed of the woman will bruise Satan's head.

But Satan would bruise the heel of her seed.

When Christ died, He must have thought He won.

He had bruised the Son of God, who came from heaven, became flesh, which He probably couldn't even fathom that. Wait a minute. How did He do that? He died? I've won?

I bruised Him?

Hebrews 2. Hebrews 2. Hebrews 2.

Now, when you look at Daniel 2, when you look at the Olivet prophecy, when you look at the book of Revelation, when you look at the book of Ezekiel, you'll realize, ah, it's all built off of this. Those are just details. Those are just details of what God's doing in reconciling mankind back to Him through the First and Second Coming of the Messiah.

You can't preach the First Coming and not preach the Second. And you can't preach the Second Coming and not preach the First.

To do so is to preach half of the message.

You can't preach one without the other.

Or you twist and pervert the gospel.

Hebrews 2, verse 14.

Right over here, Hebrews says, he's stomped right on his head.

That's what he did. He dipped at the heel of Jesus. You know, if you get bit at the heel by a big rattlesnake, you think you're going to die. He dipped at the heel of Jesus Christ. He bruised his heel. And what did he do? I remember being at camp when you're walking along at night. There's a little rattlesnake out there. And a couple of us stopped, and I was explaining, you know, how I am. I got a teach... Every moment is a teaching moment. I'm in and I'm teaching everybody about rattlesnakes, you know. And one of the guys come along and big text his boots on and squished his head.

And why'd you do that? Hate snakes. Yeah. Okay.

I've killed rattlesnakes before, but I can honestly say I've never stepped on one with my boots. I shoot them, because I'm not going to get close enough to step on it with my boots, okay?

This is what happened. He nipped at his heel, and he smashed him right in the head.

But Christ is back the second time. What does He do to him? He removes him.

Satan's going to get crazier as we get close to the end, because he's already been defeated. He doesn't have anything left except the destruction of humanity. There's nothing left. He's done his best, and he was defeated. When Christ comes back, it is to remove Him.

You and I have been oppressed by Satan our whole lives. That's why this foundation of prophecy is so important. We're not to ignore prophecy, but let's face it, we can come up with the craziest prophecies if you don't build it on the right premises.

There's one statement made by Paul that's absolutely unique in the Scripture, but it's interesting, because I wanted you to think about, we are oppressed by Satan.

And when Christ comes back, where will we be?

He brings an army of white-robed saints with Him. Right? He brings an army of white-robed saints. That's where we all want to be.

Notice Romans 16.

Romans 16. It's just a little statement in the middle of the whole discourse here by Paul, but it's a remarkable little statement. Verse 20.

And the God of peace will crush Satan under your feet shortly.

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.

Christ crushes Him, but we all get to be part of it. We are there with Him. We're part of it. We're right behind Him.

The seed of the woman is to protect and save the other seed, us.

So you see, Genesis 3.15, the proto-evangelion is really the first good news. It's the starting point of all prophecy. It's where it all starts.

And if you put the rest of the Bible together, it shows you where it goes. It shows you how it ends.

We have scratched the surface of these messianic prophecies.

We haven't even discussed Jesus as a divine being, but we have looked at Him as the prophet, the servant, the king, and the Son of God. And how just a handful of prophecies, what five prophecies I went through, and how they are interpreted and explained in the New Testament.

We know that He comes twice. What's the suffer for human sin?

And the second time to rule all nations to bring God's kingdom to this earth. And you know what? That really is evangelical. That really is good news.