PROTOEVANGELIUM

I haven't finished the series on the Beatitudes, but I also said that I was going to start a series on prophecy. So we'll get back to the Beatitudes. We're going to be doing a prophetic sermon probably about once a month, and hopefully by the end of this month I'll be able to finish or get through most of the Beatitudes. And I was thinking about how do I want to start this series on prophecy. So I've been thinking about that, and I was going to start with, you know, Daniel 2, or all these different places in the Scripture. And then I asked myself, I started to think about if I had to say this is the number one verse, the number one prophetic verse in the Bible, what is it? Because if I can pinpoint that, that's where we'll start.

And, you know, we have all these things we want to know about, and we'll go through the abomination of desolation. I mean, I have all these subjects that we'll go through. Some of them we've covered, some of them I haven't covered in years, but we'll go through it, and we'll look at all these different prophecies. But how are we to look at, if we started with a foundation, and we built prophecy brick by brick on top of that, what would we start with? Where would we go?

Let's go to Genesis 3. Let's go to the beginning of the Bible.

Genesis 3. Because this is why we're in a mess today. This is a prophecy that concerns that. You will find as I go through prophecies, like I do doctrine, we just start with simple things. We build off the simple. As I've said many times, I think if you've ever tried to reason with a two-year-old, and finally you say, just do it because I told you so. I believe God reasons with us all the time, and the end He just says, just do it, child, because I told you so. When you get older, you'll understand.

So we deal with the simple, and we work off of that, because that's where God always starts. And what we have here, of course, is how God created the first two human beings. They had a perfect relationship with Him.

Everything was fine as they lived in this relationship. But God had given them free will, and He allowed Satan to come into their experience so that they could have a choice, and they chose wrong. And so you and I have lived in all these thousands of years we've lived in a deteriorating world. Here's what He told them after they had sinned, and then how they were now going to be kicked out of Eden, and Satan was going to be the God of this world. Verse 14. So the Lord God said to the serpent, so He's talking to Satan, but He's also cursing the animal that He used, because you have done this.

You are cursed more than all cattle and more than every beast of the field. On your belly you shall go, and you shall eat dust all the days of your life. So Satan, of course, was already cursed as he had rebelled against God as an angel, and now was the leader of rebellious angels. And now even the animal he used is cursed. But this next verse is very interesting. And I will put enmity between you and the woman. Now this just doesn't mean snakes. It means Satan.

You and the woman, and between your seed and her seed, and ye shall bruise your head, and ye shall bruise his hill. And so the woman, He said, I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception, and pain you shall bring forth, children. Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you. And basically what he says, look Eve, you have no idea what you've unleashed, because your nature is corrupt. It's changed. Now they knew something had changed, because soon as they had sinned, what did they do?

They wouldn't hid themselves from God. They felt guilt. They felt shame. Things they had never experienced before. And they hid from God. And He said, that's just the beginning now. You have been pushed, you have run away from me. And so I'm going to push you out of the garden. And He said, as this deterioration happens, God never intended for birthing children to be as difficult as it is. It was never how you were designed, but we're going to deteriorate as people, as human beings. He says, this relationship you had with Adam, it was good, but it's now messed up. Everything's now changed. He says to Adam, because you have heeded the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you saying, you shall not eat of it.

Cursed is the ground for your sake. In toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life. And you know, when you look through most of human history, most people haven't lived by the privileged lives that we've lived. Most people had to work all the time, hard, every day, just to survive. Most of us haven't experienced much of that, or maybe periods of it.

But most of us haven't had to work hard 12 hours a day, six days a week, just to survive. But you know, most of humanity has spent their lives just trying to survive. And many places in the world today, people get up every day and they work just to survive. The ground, the world that we live in, nature isn't what it's supposed to be. It's not supposed to be this hard to grow food. There's not supposed to be all these what we call natural disasters. They're actually unnatural disasters. It's the result of what's happening here.

Both thorns and thistles shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the herb of the field. In 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, he said. And the ultimate result of what you have done is you will die. Now, I'm sure at this point they had no idea what that meant. They had never seen anyone die. They had never seen anything die. That was an unknown experience.

You and I live in this decayed world with decayed human nature. Yeah, I don't think too many of us in this room are going to be, live to be, what, 110? How about 105? A few might reach that. Mr. Elethorpe, maybe. How old are you, Mr. Elethorpe? 86. He might.

I mean, the issue is we realize we're in a decaying world. This is what started. You and I live in that. And Satan was going to oppress them all their lives. And the whole Bible is a story of Satan's oppression of humanity. Verse 24 says, so he drove man, the man. So this is God. He drove out the man and he placed carobim at the east of the garden of Eden, a flaming sword, which turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life. He says, I'm not giving you right now the freedom to have eternal life.

Right now, you're going to live as decaying people, both physically and spiritually decaying, in a world of decay, ruled over by the one who convinced you to go that way. And that's the world you and I were born into. But what was said in verse 15 is absolutely important in understanding the entire Bible.

Talking here about Satan and humanity. And I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your seed and her seed. He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel. In other words, some seed of Eve was going to control, take over the head, bruise Satan. But Satan was going to bruise his heel. Satan was going to actually hurt him.

In Greek, they call this the proto-evangelium. Well, that's a big word that you get to use every day. It's actually a very simple meaning. Proto meaning beginning first. Evangelium in Greek means good news. It's the first good news.

It's actually the first prophecy. It's the very first good news. God says it started now, but it doesn't end that way. From the foundation of the earth, he said, Christ was slain. From the foundation at this point, when the whole human society began, he said, I am going to be involved in this, and Satan's rule over you is limited. Sometimes we forget we think of the kingdom of God as the millennium. Well, the millennium is when Christ brings God's kingdom to earth.

But where did God's kingdom go, by the way? I mean, did it disappear? Did God somehow never leave his throne? God's kingdom has always existed. God has always been on his throne.

It's just he let Satan have this little piece of it for a while. And that prophecy, that's the beginning of all prophecy, is you only have a piece of it, and you only have it for a while, and it's limited. Satan doesn't get to rule everything all the time. Because if he did, you and I wouldn't be here, by the way. You and I are here because God, every once in a while, just comes into human history and says, no, I'm working here. This is mine. This is what I'm doing to fulfill my purpose. We want to know what 666 means. We want to know what the mark of the beast. We want to know all these things. But you know, they only have relevancy when we understand God's plan, because all those things are Satan's plan.

All the things we look at in Bible history, the beasts and all that, you know, those are Satan's plans. God's plan, as we go through them, is always says, that's what you'll see him do. Now let me show you what I do. He didn't go away. He lets him have some rule. He takes it away from him. In the future, he takes it away from him. But we need to set the foundation in the simplicity of what is God's prophetic plan? What does God tell us? This is what I'm doing, by the way.

And you get to be part of it in the midst of a decaying world with a decaying human nature and an evil being trying to influence and rule over everything.

So we're going to be looking at today at the first couple sermons, not about Satan's, all the prophecies about Satan's plan. We're going to be looking at God's plan, because that's the important part. So we're going to look at the proto-evangelium. Not that you ever need to know that word. It's just, I like it. I like saying it. The gospel. The first gospel. The first good news is, it's a mess you just created and you're entering into, but I'll fix it. How does he fix it? One of the things we'll have to do, starting, you know, in our next prophetic sermon, you think, oh good, now we'll finally get to Daniel 7 or Revelation 13. No? We're going to have to show how God has been interacting in human history, and many of it, his prophecy, some of them fulfilled, some of them haven't been, in order to carry out his plan. And he does it through a series of interaction with human beings called covenants. Now we tend to think of, well, there's the Sinai covenant, which we call the old covenant, and the new covenant, what Jesus brought, and they're related. They're not exactly the same, but they're related, but there's some continuity. There's some discontinuity, you know, the 10 commandments are continuous, the holy days are continuous, animal sacrifices aren't, because Jesus became the sacrifice, and we look at those two. But there's a whole lot more covenants in the Bible than just those two that God makes with human beings. And they're all part of the plan, this prophetic plan. Now we know the end of the prophetic plan.

The end of the prophetic plan of God is Revelation 21, where New Jerusalem comes to earth. So there you go. We know what the end is. That's the prophetic plan that God's working on. And it's God comes to earth, and he says, all those who are changed are now his children. And New Jerusalem is now on earth. What comes after that, he says, ah, you can't even imagine what happens after that. You can't imagine what happens after that. Oh, we make up all kinds of things, but you know, it really doesn't tell us much.

He just tells us, this is the plan, and it starts here with them getting kicked out of Eden, and then me recreating the earth into a spiritual Eden. That's it. And then the fun starts. That's when it really gets good. This has to be the basis of all prophetic research. What is God doing? What does He promise? Because whatever Satan does, when we get into all that, we'll always see God never lets him totally succeed. He never does. Because if He succeeded, He would destroy humanity, and that's not part of God's plan. So He sets up these series of covenants. And we'll be going through these covenants, but I just want to touch on one, because I want to show you then how that ties in to Genesis 3.15. Genesis 12.

One of the covenants that God made was with Abraham, and this is a vitally important covenant.

Genesis 12. I'll create a chart for you of all the different covenants so you can study the covenants. There are certain covenants in the Bible that you're part of with God, and we don't even think about it. We're actually in different covenants with God, and they're all agreements we make. Now, we're under the new covenant, which is the primary covenant, but when we get there, you'll see what I mean.

Genesis 12. Now the Lord said to Abraham, Get out of your country from your family, from your father's house, to a land where I will show you. And 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 then pick out this next phrase. So all these are promises made to Abraham. Much of the Old Testament is what? God working through the extended family of Abraham. And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

There are certain blessings made on the families of Abraham, not just those who came from Isaac and Jacob and Joseph. I mean, there are promises made to the Ishmaelites, because they're descendants of Abraham. There are promises made to Esau. Not a lot of good ones, but there were some promises made, some good ones. There are promises made to all these people who are part of the family in one way or another of Abraham. But there's one that says, everybody gets blessed by you. Everybody gets blessed because of Abraham, because of a covenant God made with him when God reached down into history and said, okay, I'm doing this. So that my kingdom is set up on this earth again, I'm doing this. And it's in these moments that Satan realizes, oh, he's really still in charge. He keeps trying to change what God's doing, but he's really still in charge. It's still his. He just lets us mess it up for a while. We're the children in the playroom fighting over the toys. One day, dad walks in because it's still his house. That's the way God is with us. You're screaming, we're hollering, we're fighting, we're over the toys. And God finally one day steps in and says, that's enough. It's my house.

Once we recognize that, we understand this is the core of prophecy.

Galatians 3. Here's the thing we have about the Old Testament. If we were in Judaism, now there's of course different branches of Judaism. There's Orthodox Jews and conservative Jews. There's like four major branches of Judaism. But they have one thing in common, and that is none of them accept the New Testament as authentic. It may have some truth to it. Jesus probably lived, but they don't define the Old Testament through the New Testament. We actually define the Old Testament through the New Testament. So, you know, Jesus could be, well, let's see, a very liberal rabbi. That's one viewpoint of him. A little screwy, though. Pretty good teacher with some good ideas, but very liberal. Why? He was against the Orthodox Jews. He was against the ultra-conservative Jews. Or, in some Jews, he's a heretic. Well, look at why they believe that. He's an absolute heretic. He can't be from God, because he makes certain claims and says certain things that just can't be true. So, in Judaism today, that's why they don't accept Jesus, even after 2,000 years, because they don't accept the New Testament. We look at the New Testament and we interpret Old Testament prophecies by the New Testament.

And that's why Jews will say, yeah, you get crazy ideas because you believe in the New Testament. You shouldn't believe in the New Testament. Then you can understand the Scripture. That's why we always have to be a little careful about Jewish interpretations of the Bible, because the rejection of the New Testament means that they don't interpret the Scripture the way we do. Now, sometimes we will find we come on the same page over certain things, but there's signs we don't. Colossians 3. Because here is a real unique way of looking at what we just read in Genesis 12. Now, I read this in a sermon not too long ago. I was talking about something different, but I'm going back to this point that was made in this verse. Verse 15 of Galatians 3, Paul says, in the manner of men, there's only a man's covenant. Yet, if it is confirmed, no one annulses it or adds to it. Now, we're going to find a lot of comments in the New Testament as we go through the next couple of sermons about covenants and prophecy. They're tied together. The covenants tell us what God's doing now and what he's doing in the future, and it gives us an idea of a historical context for everything. So he's talking about covenants, and he switches here. He says, now to Abraham and his seed. So now he's talking about a very specific covenant, but we just read the Abrahamic covenant, an agreement God made with Abraham. Now, to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He does not say, and to seeds as of many, but as of one and to your seed, who is Christ. Paul looks at Genesis 12 and says, we know what that means. All the nations of the world will be blessed through Abraham's seed. And he says, you know, he didn't mean that to be taken plural. He didn't mean all Jews and all his allies. He means one, one that all nations will be blessed by. And that is Jesus Christ.

Now, when you stop and think about that, let's go back to Genesis 3.15. What did we read? Genesis 3.15. And there will be a seed of a woman who will conquer Satan, although Satan will damage him. He'll hurt him, but he's going to conquer Satan. And then to Abraham, he says, you're the one who the seed's going to come through. And Paul comes along and says, Jesus is the seed. And we're going to have to look at the context when we get the covenants. Because he's saying God is doing something right now that might have started with Abraham and went through the Sinai covenant, but it's much greater. What God is doing under the new covenant is actually much greater. Each step in this expands outwards. Each step expands outwards.

I mean, there's a covenant God made with Noah that saved him and eight people, right? Yes. He had to do that. He was going to destroy humanity, but he couldn't destroy all of them. Why? Well, Genesis 3, 15 says he won't.

So he made a covenant. You are the people I'm going to save.

So that I'm going to, no matter what Satan does, he has everybody so evil. Good! Let God kill all of them. Now, I'll keep the ones that I can work with, wipe out everybody else because I'm still going to win this. I'm still going to do what I'm going to do, and he can't stop me. So even Noah and the covenant God made with Noah is a step in this, Genesis 3, 15. The new covenant is a step in Genesis 3, 15. Let me show you another one. Let's go to Deuteronomy 18. We're just going to look at a handful of prophecies here.

We have to go back to some of this basic information, and we have to really strive to understand it. And you know, what we're going through today is pretty simple in many ways, but we have to strive to understand it. Because if we don't have this bigger picture of what God is doing, the Bible becomes little bits and pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that we never quite put together. We never quite put together. Or we create our own picture out of it.

We create our own picture.

Here's an interesting prophecy in which I would have no idea what it means, except for something in the New Testament.

Here God is talking to Moses in verse 15. The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me, like Moses. This is Moses telling the people this. From your midst, from your brethren, him you shall hear, according to all you desire 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, nor let me see the great fire any more, lest I die. Remember before Mount Sinai, when God came to make a covenant with them, remember they said, No, don't let God talk to us. They were so frightened by the voice, by the mount being on fire and shaking. They were so frightened to be in the presence of God that they said, No, don't let him talk to us any more. And here it says, well, a prophet's going to come and talk to you in a voice that you'll understand. He's not going to be breathing fire and shaking mountains, but he's going to come to you and talk to you about God and for God. Verse 17, And the Lord said to me, What they have spoken is good. This is what God had said to Moses when they said that. And I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brethren, and will put my words in his mouth, and he will speak to them all that I command him. And it shall be that whoever will not hear my words, which he speaks in my name, I will require of it of him. In other words, everybody will be judged by how much they listen to this prophet. Now, I don't know what that means, except for Acts chapter 3. So let's go to Acts chapter 3.

You want to do an interesting study? Take the next six months, because it'll take you a long time.

Go through the New Testament and all the places where you'll see in your margins, where you'll see an A and you look over and it has a scripture there. And every time you see an Old Testament scripture being referenced, look it up.

And that's just a small number of the references. I have a book at home. It's dedicated to finding every Old Testament reference to every verse in the New Testament. It's only about that thick.

And when you do, you'll start to realize how much the Old Testament is quoted over and over and over and over. Bits and pieces. Paul does it all the time. Jesus does it, too. Jesus quotes the Old Testament. You just don't see for what it is because it's little bits and pieces of it. As I've said before, Paul will take three places in the Old Testament and merge them together like it's all in one thing. And yet you'll find that it broken up. Oh, and part of this is from Psalms, part of this from Isaiah, and part of this is from someplace else. And a lot of times, he doesn't tell you where he got it. Sometimes he quotes the Hebrew Bible. Sometimes he quotes the Septuagint. Sometimes he's just sort of paraphrasing. Because that's how we do when we talk. It's how we do who we write. And that's what he's doing. But it's always referencing the Old Covenant, what we call the Old Testament. He's always referencing those scriptures. It's the Old Testament and the Old Covenant aren't the same thing. But chapter 3, and what we have is this situation where Peter and John heal a lame man, and it creates quite a stir. Let's begin in verse 11. Now as the lame man who was held onto Peter and John, all the people ran together to them in the porch, which is called Solomon's, greatly amazed. So this is part of the temple. So when Peter saw it, he responded to the people, men of Israel, why do you marvel at this? Why do you so intently look so intently at us as though by our own power or godliness we have made this man walk? The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of her fathers glorified his servant Jesus, whom you delivered up and denied in the presence of Pilate, but he was determined to let him go. You denied the Holy One. Now this is a Messianic name that he's using here. You denied the Holy One and the just, and asked for a murderer to be granted to you. And you killed the Prince of Life, whom God raised up from the dead, of which we are all witnesses.

So Peter starts going into those prophecies. It is interesting. I watched a video a while back of interviews with Jews who did become Christians, because it's pretty rare. And in every case, they said the reason why is because they looked at the Messianic prophecies. They didn't look at the teachings of Jesus. They looked at the Messianic prophecies. And when they read Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, it was like, oh, that's exactly what they said the Messiah would do. So they bought into the New Testament, and then they said, okay, I must accept Jesus as the Messiah. But they did it because of prophecies, because that's the foundation of all prophecy, as who is the Messiah, and God's plan for fulfilling Genesis 3.15. Look now. He tells them to repent and be converted, that their sins may be forgiven. And then he says, verse 22, he said, this has been the foundation of prophecy that has been told throughout what we know is the Scripture, because he didn't have the New Testament yet. You are the sons of the prophet and of the covenant, because this prophecy is carried out through covenants, which God made with our fathers, saying to Abraham, and in your seed all the families of the earth shall be blessed. He says, we were told, we've been told all our lives as Jews, that in the seed of Abraham all the nations will be blessed. Jesus is that seed. He's making the same point that Paul would in Galatians. Verse 26, and to you first, he's talking to the Jews there, to you first, God, having raised up His servant Jesus, said Him to bless you and turning away every one of you from your iniquities, to you first. He's telling him something amazing has happened. Something has changed to you first, just first. Because this has to expand out now. This has to go out every place.

And when we look at those original apostles, they died taking this message every place. Because they understood what was happening. They understood what was prophetically happening. Now, I want to look at a few Messianic prophets. Just a few. We're going to cherry pick a few here. And look how they're explained in the New Testament. And you will see how these prophecies, which we take for granted, everyone here knows that Jesus Christ came as a human being to die for our sins and be resurrected and returned to the Father. Everyone here knows He's coming back again. But you have to... That's so well known to us for missing the point. That's the foundation of everything. It's the foundation of everything, including all the prophecy. All the prophecies from God's viewpoint is this. Everything else is built on top of it.

Look at Psalm 2. Psalm 2. Now, sometimes in the Jewish community, they'll say that this is just David talking about himself. So it's ridiculous to say that this is about the Messiah. Others say this is a Messianic prophecy, but it really has nothing to do with Jesus. 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.

That's where they get the word Messiah or Christ. Verse 2.

So there is an explanation. This is just David receiving a prophecy about himself.

But it's very interesting in verse 10.

This Messianic person, this anointed one, is also called the son.

And in verse 2, how is Psalm 2 explained in the New Testament? Well, it appears in many places in the New Testament. We're going to look at 1. Acts 4. And in typical way, the New Testament goes through, especially Paul. Acts 4 here. We will find quotes in which you are expected, as the person who heard it or the person who's reading it, you're expected to know the whole context of the quote. In other words, this quote is going to put the entire Psalm 2 into a context.

So what happens here is that some of the apostles are forbidden to teach about Jesus Christ. The Sanhedrin calls him in and says, you can't teach about him anymore. You're just forbidden. So verse 23, and being let go, 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, Lord, you are God, who made heaven and earth and the sea and all that is in them, who by the mouth of your servant David have said. So now they're going to quote something that David wrote. Why did the nations rage? Why did the people plot vain things? If the kings of the earth took their stand and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord and against His Christ. This is actually a quote of Psalm 2. And here they take Psalm 2 and say this is about Jesus because look at verse 27. For truly against your holy servant Jesus, who you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the people of Israel were gathered together. So here we see Psalm 2 used as reference to Jesus Christ.

Once again in Orthodox Judaism that would be ridiculous.

But because we believe in the New Testament, we understand, no, this is about Jesus Christ and that prophecy is about Jesus Christ. And these prophecies now form the basis for how we see God works in humanity and what He's doing today. What He did in the past, what He's doing today, what He does in the future. It's all based in these prophecies. Let's look at another one. Isaiah 11.

At the Feast of Tabernacles, you will hear this read many times, usually the first 12 verses of Isaiah 11. Because it's about the time, it's a prophecy concerning the time, when the Messiah will stand on the earth and rule on the earth. Now, that's agreed on by many Jews and most Christians. And this is a messianic prophecy. There shall come forth a rod from the stem of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of its roots. Okay, Jesse is the father of David. So this is going to be a descendant 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 of the fear of the Lord. He goes on to verse 4. He will judge the poor. He will decide with equity for the meek of the earth. He shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth. He goes on, he just talks about how he's going to rule. The wolf shall be with the lamb. He talks about how there'll be peace all over the world. Even the animals will be changed. Verse 9, and they shall not hurt nor destroy at all my mountain or all my kingdom. Mountains were just a word that was used as an allegory of a kingdom. For the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters of the sea. And in that day there shall be a root of Jesse who shall stand as a banner to the people, for the Gentiles shall seek him, and his resting place shall be glorious. It doesn't say just Israel. All Gentile means nations. It means everyone that's not part of that immediate descendants of Abraham. All peoples will seek him.

How is this used in the New Testament? Well, it's quoted a couple places. I'm going to show you one. Romans 15. Because once again, this is setting our understanding. This is why we believe what we believe. Many times you can grow up in the church and have no idea why you believe what you believe. Oh, I read that. That's what it says. I believe that. Why? Why is it that an Orthodox Jew would say, you have no idea what you're talking about? And it's because we believe in the New Testament and we believe that the New Testament defines these prophecies and what they actually mean.

Romans 15. Now, this is typical Pauline writing.

Verse 8. 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 Father. So here's the context. Jesus Christ came to the circumcision, which means the Jews. He came to them because the promise to the Father was He would come to them. He would come from them. He would be a descendant, right? Not only from Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, because that's the problem today. Much of the Arab world believes that it's Abraham Ishmael. That's the descendants. If you believe that, you have a whole different worldview. And you think the Jews that are in Israel today are horrible people that should be killed. That's why Hamas in their mandate is that they're to kill all of them.

Because they stole what God had given to Abraham and Ishmael. Now, we don't believe that. That's because we don't follow the Quran. We follow the Bible, right? Because the Bible doesn't say that. But you can see which book you believe is how you come to the conclusion you do and what motivates you to do what you do. So we believe the Old Testament, the Hebrew Scriptures. We also believe the New Testament. So here, he's talking about Christ came to the fathers. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob eventually becomes the Jews. He didn't come from any other tribes. A descendant of David, who was a Jew. So he comes to those people. And then verse 9, to confirm the promises made to the fathers and that the Gentiles, let's just put all people there, all people might glorify God for His mercy. And now he just starts popping out quotes from the Old Testament. And for this reason, I confess to you among the Gentiles and sing to your name. And again, he says, rejoice, O Gentiles, with his people. And again, praise the Lord, all you Gentiles, laud Him all you peoples. Now, you can look up and find that, and you can find those quotes from the Old Testament. Paul doesn't bother to tell us. He just throws them out there. He's just throws them out there. Except it's interesting here in verse 12. And again, Isaiah says, there shall be a root of Jesse, and he shall rise up to reign over the Gentiles, and him the Gentiles shall have hope. This root of Jesse comes from what we just read, Isaiah 11. In other words, he's going to be a Jew, a descendant of David. As these prophecies carried on, they become more and more exact. It's amazing. It starts real broad. Eight people survive, so humanity can survive. And now it's down to the descendants of one person. It would get down to, yes, and the mother has to be a virgin. And that was prophesied, and it happened. It was all spelled out, and all these prophecies got more and more exact to carry out Christ's coming the first time. They are just as exact and incoming the second time. And that's what we understand. He comes twice. First time or second time as King of Kings. And that's what you read so much of the time in the Old Testament, even the New Testament. King of Kings, Lord of Lords, although in the first part of the New Testament, they're always proving, no, He's the Messiah.

A lot of Jews just could see that, but He's supposed to be the King of Kings.

I mean, the Romans killed Him. How could that be? How could that be? And then you have Isaiah 52. That's good, Isaiah 52.

We read this, parts of it, at the Passover. I always encourage everybody to read all of it before the Passover. In Isaiah 52, there begins this, in verse 13, there begins this prophecy about a servant from God. Now, we've already seen where Jesus called the Christ, and He's called the servant. Now, there's lots of anointed ones. There's lots of servants, but all these prophecies, everybody agrees on, is about a very specific person. These are different than everybody else. Verse 13, Behold, my servant shall deal prudently. He shall be exalted and extrolled and be very high. So this servant is above all others. Just as many were astonished at you, so his visage was marred more than any man, and is far more than the sons of men. This person comes to be beaten to the place he doesn't look like a human being. How can this be King of Kings? So shall he sprinkle many nations, and kings shall shut their mouths at him, for what has not been told that they shall not see. What they had not heard, they shall consider. He goes on a talks in verse 3 of chapter 53. He's despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief, and we hid ourselves from him. Then verse 5, there's something so remarkable about this prophecy. When I watched that video about Jews who did convert to Christianity, it was Isaiah 52 and 53 that led them to finally say, you know, this does describe a fulfillment of this. They read Matthew and Mark and Luke and John in the last chapters and said, no, this does describe this. And this was the one thing that inspired them more than anything else to say. We must maybe consider that Jesus is the Messiah. He was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement for our peace was upon Him. You and I can't have peace from God and peace with God. We can't unless we accept the work He did through Jesus Christ and reconciling us to Him. He took what we deserve upon Himself to show us how to get there. He goes on and He talks about all the things He's going to go through. And then verse 10 says, and it pleased the Lord to bruise Him. He has put Him to grief when you make His soul an offering for sin and He shall see His seed. He shall prolong His days and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hand. It's a remarkable prophecy. How is this used in the New Testament? 1 Peter 2. 1 Peter 2. This is how we, this is one of the places we look at and say, okay, since we believe in the New Testament was inspired by God, we believe what Peter says here.

For to you who were called, now I'm breaking in the middle of a thought, but I just want to get to this quote, for to this you were called because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example that you should follow whose steps, who committed no sin, nor was the seed found in His mouth. But we didn't read that, but that's actually in Isaiah. It's part of that passage in Isaiah 52 and 53. And he goes on and describes, he bore our sins upon himself. And so he goes through now and quotes bits and pieces and takes that Isaiah and the rest of this chapter here of chapter 2 of 1 Peter. And he says, Jesus is that person. What we have is God coming into human history and taking and making sure what He says is going to happen is going to happen in spite of all the chaos. Because the one thing about Satan, all he does is produce chaos. Always remember that the more chaotic you see the world around you, the more you try to figure out what's happening, and a lot of times you can't, you can't. The reason you can't is because Satan creates the chaos. We have to go to the prophecies from God and the prophecies from God and hang on to those in their simplicity sometimes. In their simplicity.

Because he loves to get us sucked into the chaos. He loves to have us wired up and upset all the time. Instead of looking at the promises from God, we're looking at the work he does. I'll just mention one last place. Isaiah 61. Well, let's just go there as our last script for Isaiah 61. And verse 1.

Very well-known scripture. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because the Lord has anointed me to preach the good tidings to the poor. He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and the opening of the prisons of those who are bound.

This scripture, when Jesus gave his first real powerful sermon, you read about it in Luke, He took Isaiah, opened it up, and read that and said, today you're watching this be fulfilled. Now they knew this was a messier prophecy.

He basically said, I'm him. And always friends and neighbors tried to kill him. It was blasphemy. It was heresy to claim that you were the anointed. And he claimed he was the anointed. I always get real nervous about people. I mean, God anoints people for specific jobs, but to be the anointed, I don't know if he still does this. There is a minister who used to be part of the worldwide church of God who claims that the prophet in Deuteronomy, he claims he's that prophet.

Jesus is that prophet. And any man who claims to be that prophet is a false prophet. I just want you to know my opinion. I won't say his name. But any man who claims to be that prophet, when the New Testament says Jesus is that prophet, it's a false prophet. Understand that.

We know that Jesus conquered Satan, says that in Hebrew, says it all through the New Testament. He conquered Satan. But Satan bruised his heel, didn't he? He caused him trouble. He caused him pain. He caused him discomfort. But it didn't matter. He conquered him. Just like Genesis 3.15 said, but it's not completed yet. It's not completed yet. Satan will be removed forever. How do we know that? Prophecies. And it's the prophecies that are part of those foundation prophecies. Prophecies about Christ's second coming. Prophecies about him being totally removed for a thousand years, Satan. And then Satan being loosed for a little bit. And then Satan removed forever into outer darkness. Those prophecies are the foundation ones. They're the ones that help us look at Satan's work and say, it won't last. It can't work. We know what God's doing. We know what he's carrying out. We know what he's going to complete. We know how it will end. Because everything he said he would do, starting with the proto-evangelium, has been going through all these years, and it's going to be carried out to that end. And that makes it where we can have a certain calmness in the chaos.

Because we know what God is doing. We know what the whole plan is. So that gives us our foundation for now, building on prophecy. It probably wasn't where you thought we would start, but it's where we should start. Now we'll talk about how God has done that through covenants, and each of those covenants, many of them, contain prophecies. And how those covenants apply today, what is the new covenant, and how we're under that, and the prophecies of that covenant. And then that will set us up to begin to say, okay, now let's look at what Satan's doing, and what God tells us about Satan's work so we can understand in the context of not the fear of what Satan's doing, but in the context of what God is doing.