What was Said on the Road to Emmaus

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I want to invite you to take out your Bibles and turn with me to the Gospel of Luke.
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If you need a Bible, there should be one around the seats there in front of you.
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We're going to go to Luke 24 here.
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Go ahead and hold your place there at verse 13.
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It has been said that no matter where you cut the Word of God, it will bleed the blood of Christ.
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No matter where you cut the Word of God, it will bleed the blood of Christ.
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What that means effectively is that Jesus Christ is not just a New Testament figure.
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In fact, He is seen prefigured throughout all of the Old Testament books.
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This means that no matter where we open our Bibles, we can see the work of Christ prefigured.
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We can see the work of Christ pointed to.
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We can see the work of Christ prophesied about.
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But where does that idea come from? Is that just sort of like wishful thinking for Christians who want to read the Old Testament and find some kind of fuller meaning in the New Testament? Is that just sort of something we've made up? Well, yes, anywhere you look in the Bible, you will find Jesus.
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Or is there good reason for us to say that Christ is through all of the Old and the New Testament? Well, I would submit to you this morning that we have the greatest of all reasons to believe that the Old Testament speaks of Christ.
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That reason is Jesus Himself.
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Jesus Himself used the Old Testament to prove that His work, including His death, burial, and resurrection, was all part of God's plan from the beginning.
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He states this specifically in our text this morning.
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So that's what we're going to look at.
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We're going to look at how Jesus actually makes the claim that He is found throughout the entire Bible.
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So let's stand together and read the text.
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Luke 24 starting in verse 13.
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Verse 13 says, that very day, two of them were going to a village named Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem.
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And they were talking with each other about all these things that had happened.
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While they were talking and discussing together, Jesus Himself drew near and went with them.
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But their eyes were kept from recognizing Him.
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And He said to them, what is this conversation that you are holding with each other as you walk? And they stood still looking sad.
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Then one of them named Cleopas answered Him, are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened here in these days? And He said to them, what things? And they said to Him, concerning Jesus of Nazareth, a man who was a prophet, mighty in deed and word before God and all the people.
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And how our chief priests and rulers delivered Him up to be condemned to death and crucified Him.
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But we had hoped that He was the One to redeem Israel.
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Yes, and beside all this, it is now the third day since these things happened.
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Moreover, some women of our company amazed us.
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They were at the tomb early in the morning.
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And when they did not find His body, they came back saying that they had even seen a vision of angels who said that He was alive.
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Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the woman had said.
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But Him they did not see.
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And He said to them, O foolish ones and slow of heart to believe all the prophets have spoken.
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Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into His glory? And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, He interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself.
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So they drew near to the village to which they were going.
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He acted as if He were going further, but they urged Him strongly saying, stay with us for it is toward evening and the day is now far spent.
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So He went in to stay with them.
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When He was at the table with them, He took the bread and blessed and broke it and gave it to them.
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And their eyes were opened and they recognized Him.
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And He vanished from their sight.
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They said to each other, did not our hearts burn within us while He talked to us on the road? While He opened to us the Scriptures? And they rose that same hour and returned to Jerusalem and they found the eleven and those who were with them gathered together saying, the Lord has risen indeed and has appeared to Simon.
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Then they told what had happened on the road.
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And how He was known to them in the breaking of the bread.
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Let's pray together.
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Our Father and our God, we thank You for leading us to this time in the worship where we may open the Word of God and study it together.
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We pray, O Lord, that You would first and foremost, as I always pray, Lord, keep me from error as I am a fallible man capable of preaching error.
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I pray that You would keep my heart focused on the truth.
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And Lord God, I pray also that You open the hearts of the people to understand the Word of God, to understand its message, to understand its meaning.
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And Lord God, that it would be applied to us and that we would live our lives in light of the Word.
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And Father, I just pray that You would be with us now as we have this time of study.
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Give us focus and confidence to open Your Word together in Jesus' name, Amen.
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One of the most common questions that I'm often asked by people who do not believe in Jesus Christ or who do not believe that Christ is necessary for salvation.
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And I actually spend a great deal of time talking to people like that.
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It seems as if the ranks are growing ever increasingly as of late of people who are looking for some other God or some other thing to believe in, some other place to put their faith.
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And the thing is, I often talk to people who call themselves atheists or call themselves agnostics.
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And they say, I don't believe in anything.
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Everybody believes in something.
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Everybody has a God of some kind, whether your God is science or whether your God is yourself or whether your God is your girlfriend or whether your God is the Internet.
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Whatever it is, everybody has something that is their God, that which gets all of their time, that which gets all of their worship, that which gets all of their attention.
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So, don't ever kid yourself and think that you know people who don't have a God.
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They do.
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It's just not the God.
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It's just some other form of God that they have put in that place because it's in the very nature of man to worship.
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It's in the very nature of man to fix our eyes, our gaze upon something.
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And God tells us to fix our eyes and our gaze upon Him.
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And often when I talk to these people who are not believers in Christ, one of the objections that's often raised to the Christian faith is, well, you say that Jesus Christ is necessary.
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Faith in Christ is necessary for salvation.
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And we say, well, yes.
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The Bible says there is no other name given among men by which men must be saved but by the name of Jesus Christ.
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At the name of Jesus Christ, every knee shall bow, every tongue shall confess that He is Lord.
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Obviously, Jesus asked the Father on the night before the crucifixion.
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He said, Father, if there be another way, take this cup from Me.
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But yet, God didn't provide another way.
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Christ was the way and the only way.
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So we know, and Jesus Himself said there, I am the way, the truth, and the life.
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No one cometh unto the Father but by Me.
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There's no question to the exclusivity of the Gospel.
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There's no question that Christ alone saves.
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So the question then from the unbeliever often is poised like this.
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They will say, well, what about the people who lived before Jesus? What about the people who lived before Christ? If you're telling me that it is an all-exclusive truth that Jesus Christ is necessary for salvation, how then can you claim that those people were saved? Because they never knew Jesus' name.
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They never knew who He was.
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They never once met Jesus.
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Jesus wasn't born until about 2,000 years ago.
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And if we follow a biblical timeline of history, then you go back to Adam, you know, 7,000 or 8,000 years ago to the time of Adam and to us now.
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If you look at all those people that came before Jesus Christ, what happened to them? And my answer has always been the same.
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It's always been very succinct.
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And if you want the answer, I'll give it to you right now.
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This is how I usually answer the question.
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I say there has never been a person who has ever been saved apart from Jesus Christ.
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And the people say, wait a minute.
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Now, again, I ask you, if Jesus Christ came in the first century A.D.
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and yet we know men lived before the first century A.D., how then were those people saved if Christ was necessary? And again, my answer is that those people too were saved by Christ.
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The people in the Old Testament were saved by Christ who was to come.
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We are saved by Christ who has come, but both sides of the cross look to the cross.
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Whether it is prior to the cross, they're looking for the Messiah to come, or after the cross, we are looking at the Messiah who has come, both sides look to the same Jesus.
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And that's why I find the road to Emmaus to be one of the most important passages of Scripture in the Bible.
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Because it is on the road to Emmaus that our Lord Jesus Christ makes for us the absolute confident truth that He is found in the Old Testament.
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Go back to our text that we looked at this morning.
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I want to look specifically.
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We read verses 13 down to 35, but I want to look specifically at verse 27.
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Remember, this is Jesus after the resurrection.
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He's already raised.
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He meets two of His disciples on the road to Emmaus.
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Two of His disciples who did not know who He was.
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It doesn't mean that Jesus' face was disfigured or that His face was changed.
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It simply says they were supernaturally kept from knowing that it was Him for that time.
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Because He wanted to use this as a time of instruction for them.
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They didn't know who Jesus was.
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He's talking to them.
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Then He comes to them and He says, what is wrong with you? And they say, don't you know what's wrong with us? Where have you been? You know, the crucifixion of Jesus was a pretty big event.
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It had an impact on an entire city.
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You remember the week before Jesus was crucified, He came into the town on a donkey and He was lauded and hurrahed by an entire town of people who were excited about His coming.
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So, He came in on Palm Sunday right on the back of a donkey with palm branches all around Him and people were excited to see Him coming.
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And four days later, five days later, those same people who were lauding Him and hurrahing Him were calling for His crucifixion saying, we don't want Barabbas the murderer.
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Oh no, we don't want Him crucified.
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We want Jesus crucified.
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The same group of people.
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So, it was throughout the town.
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Everybody knew what had happened.
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Everybody knew what had gone on.
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Everybody knew that there was somebody who didn't deserve to die, who because of mob rule and because of sinful activity was forced to the cross and that was Christ.
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Of course, He went willingly and it was according to the plan of God.
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But from our perspective, we could say it was the people who cried out for His crucifixion.
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So, we know all of this has happened.
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We know all of what has gone on.
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We know what has happened.
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And here Jesus comes with these two men.
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They're downtrodden.
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They're sad.
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Their faces, I'm sure, look very pitiful.
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And I say men.
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We don't know that it was men.
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We know one of them was named Cleopas and there was a second one.
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Could have been his wife.
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It doesn't say these were actually two apostles.
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These were two of Jesus's followers, not of the twelve apostles.
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So, it could have been Cleopas and his wife or it could have been two men.
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But you tend to think maybe it was his wife because they lived in the same place as they went into their house.
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You notice that in the story.
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So, likely it was him and his wife.
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So, they're going along.
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They look very sad.
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Here comes Jesus.
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Walks up to them and says, Why are you upset? Why are you sad? What's wrong? And they said, don't you know? Where have you been? And they said, this person, Jesus of Nazareth, he was a man.
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He was a prophet of God.
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And he spoke God's word to us.
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And he was crucified.
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And then we'll look at verse 27 in a minute.
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But verse 25, he said, O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken.
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Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into His glory? You see, he goes from the questioner to the teacher.
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He goes from saying what happened to saying here's why it happened.
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Because in verse 27, and beginning with Moses.
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Now, why does it say Moses? Well, the first five books of the Bible are written by Moses.
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So effectively what the text is saying and beginning at Genesis, at the very earliest part of the Bible, and all the prophets.
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So that would take us all the way to Malachi.
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Beginning at Moses in Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy.
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Beginning with Moses' books all the way through the prophets.
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He interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself.
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So basically what Jesus did was He gave them a Bible study there on the road to Emmaus.
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He gave them a Bible study about Himself.
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It had to have been one of the greatest sermons ever preached to two people on a road in the middle of the Judean countryside.
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Here they are walking home and Jesus is walking with them and He starts telling them about Himself.
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Don't you wish you could have been there to hear what Jesus said about Himself? Don't you wish you could have been in the pocket of one of those apostles or one of those disciples rather? Don't you wish you could have been there hand in hand with one of those men listening to the words of Jesus Christ? Because here's the thing about the sermon.
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We don't know what was said.
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All we know is this.
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He started with Moses.
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He went through the prophets.
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And He showed how all of the Old Testament pointed to Himself.
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Beloved, there are people who don't believe that even to this day.
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There are people who do not believe that the whole Bible speaks of Christ.
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There are people who believe that the New Testament only speaks of Christ and the Old Testament speaks nothing of Christ.
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And that really is a sad belief.
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Because if you look through the Old Testament, if you look with eyes to see which only God can give, you will see Christ from the beginning all the way to the end.
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And that's why in this message, I want to give you what I think.
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See, that's kind of dangerous because I'm going to tell you something I think.
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But I'm going to tell you what I think was included in Jesus' sermon.
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Because I'm going to show you in the Old Testament some of the passages that specifically speak of Christ that I believe He would have used to describe Himself.
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Pastor, can you be absolutely certain of what Jesus said that day? No, but I know this.
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He started with Moses and He went through the prophets.
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So whatever I cover is going to be in there somewhere.
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So I know that I'm at least keeping myself tied to the post that He was in.
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He went to the Old Testament.
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We're going to go to the Old Testament.
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And we're going to look at some of those places that specifically speak to Christ.
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The first thing I believe Jesus would have done in explaining what just happened, because remember what just happened.
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These men, these people, they just watched Jesus be crucified.
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One of the strangest things to them because they believed Messiah was going to come and was going to set up His reign in the world.
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They didn't believe the Messiah was going to come and die.
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That's odd.
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That's strange.
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That's weird.
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What are you talking about? Now, Jesus has to explain how all of those Old Testament sacrifices pointed to Him.
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Did you know that the Bible actually says that the blood of bulls and goats cannot take away sin? Did you know it says that in the book of Hebrews? It says the blood of bulls and goats cannot take away sin.
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Yet, if you look in the Old Testament, all the way back to Adam and Eve, we see the sacrifices.
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What was the first thing that happened after Adam and Eve sinned? They were thrown out of the garden, then what? Anybody remember? They were clothed in the skin of an animal, right? How do you get the skin of an animal? You have to kill the animal, right? So, the very first sacrifice is seen right then.
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An animal is slain and they're clothed in the skin of the animal to cover their shame, to cover their nakedness.
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First picture of Christ in the sacrifice.
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What's the next picture? What's the next sacrifice? The next sacrifice in Scripture? Cain and Abel.
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Abel brought what? He brought an animal sacrifice.
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Abel brought something from the field.
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God received what? The blood.
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He received the blood sacrifice.
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Continue on down.
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What did Noah...
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What was Noah commanded to do after he came off the ark? Come and sacrifice.
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That's why he didn't just bring two of every animal.
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He brought two of every kind of animal, but then he brought seven of certain animals, the animals that he would use for the sacrifice.
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And then we go through the book of Genesis.
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We see Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, all offering sacrifices to God.
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Then we get to Exodus and we see Moses given the priesthood from God.
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And his brother Aaron was the first high priest.
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And Aaron was given this entire priesthood way of bringing a sacrifice.
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And we see these two miraculous sacrifices that happen every year.
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One we call Yom Kippur.
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Yom Kippur is the Day of Atonement.
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The Day of Atonement was the day where they took two goats.
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One of the goats, they would slay the goat and they would take his blood into the Holy of Holies and they would sprinkle the blood on the mercy seat, which represented the presence of God with His people.
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They took another goat.
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They didn't kill it.
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They took the other goat.
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They prayed the sins of the people over it and they took him out into a field and they let that goat go.
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That was called the scapegoat or the ezezel offering, because that goat was to continually and perpetually carry the sins of the people away.
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What was the other? I said there was two sacrifices a year.
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There was Yom Kippur.
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What's the other one? Passover, right? We just did it the other night.
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Passover lamb.
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The Passover lamb.
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How did we get the Passover lamb? The lamb is sacrificed and His blood is painted on the doorposts of the house.
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For what reason? So that the judgment of God would not befall the people that rested within that home.
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And then you continue on through Leviticus.
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And Leviticus gives us all of the different types of offerings.
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The blood offerings throughout the Scriptures.
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Yet, when you get to the New Testament, the New Testament says, all of that meant nothing without Christ.
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Because it said the blood of bulls and goats cannot take away sin.
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But the blood of bulls and goats pointed to Christ.
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Every time a knife was put at the throat of a goat.
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Every time a knife was put to the throat of a lamb.
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Every time a knife was put to the throat of a ram.
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Every time it signified Jesus Christ.
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It was a picture of Christ.
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You can't tell me those Old Testament believers didn't believe in Christ because they were holding the symbol of Christ in their hands.
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Which was that sacrificial animal.
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Do you ever wonder why we don't sacrifice animals anymore? Oh, it's because we're not a barbaric culture, Pastor Keith.
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No, that's not true.
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That's incorrect.
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It's not that we're not barbaric.
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It's not that we're enlightened.
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Because the enlightenment only came like 150 years ago, 200 years ago.
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That's when the enlightenment came.
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And we stopped doing sacrifices of animals 2,000 years ago.
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After Christ, there was no need to sacrifice animals anymore.
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In fact, when was the temple destroyed? 80, 70, 40 years after the death of Christ.
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That's what Jesus said.
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He said, this generation shall not pass away until these things take place.
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And I believe He was talking about the destruction of the temple there.
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I don't think He was talking about His return.
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We could have an eschatological discussion at another time.
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But that particular statement is this generation will not pass away.
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And you look.
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One generation, what happened? Jerusalem fell under Emperor Titus when he came in and destroyed the temple.
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And since then, to this very day, there has not been one sacrifice made by the Jews.
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Because they have no place to do it.
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You know what's funny? It's just been 2,000 years.
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It's been 2,000 years.
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They still haven't rebuilt that temple.
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Did you know they built three temples in a span of 1,000 years? From the time of Solomon to the time of Christ, there were three temples built.
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Because the first one was destroyed, they had to build a second one.
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That one was destroyed, they had to build a third one.
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The time Jesus came and He threw the people out of the temple, that was the third temple called Herod's Temple.
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But when that one was destroyed, it has not been rebuilt in 2,000 years.
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Why? I believe it is the judgment of God.
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God has said no more sacrifices.
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The sacrifice has come.
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It has been made.
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And it's not to be repeated.
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Before Christ, the animals pointed to Christ.
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But after Christ, no more need.
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Christ has come.
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The animal sacrifice is over.
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We look to the cross.
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That's where our sacrifice is.
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The only one that truly takes away sin.
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So I think Christ would have shown them the sacrifices.
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I think He would have talked about the sacrifices.
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I think He would have said to them, These sacrifices pictured me.
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I think He also would have talked to them about the crucifixion.
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I think He would have talked to them specifically about how the crucifixion is given very specifically in the Old Testament passages where it actually says things about crucifixion that are going to happen to the Messiah.
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Psalm 22, verse 14, I am poured out like water.
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All my bones are out of joint.
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My heart is like wax.
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It is melted within my breast.
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My strength is dried up like a pot sheared.
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And my tongue sticks to my jaws.
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You lay me in the dust of the earth.
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For dogs encompass me.
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A company of evildoers encircles me.
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They have pierced my hands and my feet.
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I can count all my bones.
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They snare and gloat over me.
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They divide my garments among them.
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And for my clothing they cast lots.
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Beloved, that was written a thousand years before Christ.
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But it is a picture of what happened to Jesus on the cross.
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No other type of death in history required the piercing of the hands and the feet together other than crucifixion.
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This was written about a thousand years before it happened.
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And how could Jesus have done anything to cause people to cast lots for His clothing? But yet this passage specifically says, for my clothing they will cast lots.
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And they did.
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The Roman soldiers, as Jesus is dying on the cross, they are taking His garment and they're playing dice effectively to see who gets to take home the earnings.
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To see who gets to take home what He had, what little Christ had.
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Zechariah 12, verse 10 says, And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem the Spirit of grace and pleas for mercy, so that when they look on Me, on Him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for Him as one mourns for an only child and weep bitterly over Him as one weeps over a firstborn.
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You see, the people of God, the Jewish people will look to Christ whom they have pierced and know.
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And then of course, there is that great passage Isaiah 53.
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And if you've never read Isaiah 53, if you've never studied Isaiah 53, but you wonder in your heart if Jesus is really talked about in the Old Testament, you go back and read Isaiah 53 and you spend some time with it.
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I love where it says, He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.
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And as one from whom men hid their faces, He was despised and we esteemed Him not.
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Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted.
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But He was wounded for our transgressions.
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He was crushed for our iniquities.
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Upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and by His stripes we are healed.
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All we like sheep have gone astray.
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All we have turned, every one to his own way.
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And the Lord has laid upon Him the iniquity of us all.
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Beloved, that is a picture of the only man who has ever taken our sins from us, the Lord Jesus Christ.
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And it goes on to say that He made His grave with the wicked, but that He was with a rich man at His death.
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The picture of being on the cross with the two thieves, but yet in His death in the tomb of Joseph Arimathea.
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All of these things are prophesied in the Old Testament very specifically.
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It's very obvious.
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When you look to the Old Testament, you will see Christ not only in the sacrifices, but in the prophecies.
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Even in the very first part of the book of Genesis, when God looked at Eve after she had sinned, and He said to her, I will put enmity between you and the woman.
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Talking to Satan, rather.
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He's talking to Satan.
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He said, I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed.
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He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise His heel.
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That passage very specifically is referring to the fact that on the cross, Christ was bruised, but He crushed the head of Satan who brings sin into the world.
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And we see it all throughout the Old Testament.
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We look in different places.
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We see all of the different places where Christ is mentioned.
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Even in places where Christ is not named, or Christ is not spoken about specifically, He's foreshadowed.
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How many of you remember the story of the fiery serpents in the book of Numbers? For those of you who don't remember, I'll give you a very quick synopsis.
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According to the Scriptures, serpents were allowed to come into the camp because the people had sinned.
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And these people came in, these serpents came in and they bit the people of God.
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Probably the absolute worst punishment that I could have ever imagined was that God would allow snakes to come.
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It would be like if a bunch of snakes came in and started biting people, we would all begin to get sick and we begin to start dying because the poison would start going through our cores and through our veins and we would begin to die.
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What did God say to Moses? Moses cried out for mercy.
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He says, God, what do I do? God said, take some bronze.
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Make the bronze into a serpent.
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Put the serpent on a pole and put the pole up in the middle of the people.
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He said, and when everyone looks at it, they will live.
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Sounds kind of interesting.
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It's very...
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Go back and read the story.
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It's in Numbers chapter 21.
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But I want to make this clear to you.
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In the book of John, how many of you know John 3, 16? Almost everybody.
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John 3, 16, for God so loved the world He gave His only begotten Son.
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We all know that passage, right? Well, before that, in the Gospel of John chapter 3, Jesus said this.
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He said, just as Moses raised the serpent, so too will the Son of God be raised.
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So that whoever looks at Him will have eternal life.
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You see, right now, right now, if we don't know Christ, we're not dying.
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We're already dead.
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The Bible said we are dead in our trespasses and sins.
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And the only thing that will remedy our spiritual deadness is to look to the cross in faith.
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God opening our heart to trust in Christ and believe that He is who He said He is.
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And that's what we believe.
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We believe that Jesus was there, that Jesus was the picture, that the reason Moses made that serpent in the first place was to be a picture of the Christ who would one day come.
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That when His people look upon Him on that tree, they see their salvation.
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They see the One who gives them life.
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It is amazing to see Christ as He is so obviously portrayed in the Scriptures that were written hundreds of years, over a thousand years before He was born.
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And I believe that it is an understanding of this truth, it's an understanding of Messianic prophecy that helps us bolster our faith in the Scriptures.
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Because we see the Scriptures being a fulfillment of earlier prophecies.
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Seeing Christ in every book of the Bible helps us see that God's purpose for mankind is wrapped up in the work of Jesus Christ.
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Jesus Christ wasn't an afterthought.
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He didn't come on the show later on after God had already tried something with the Jews and that just didn't work out.
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No.
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Jesus Christ was the reason why the Jews were lifted up.
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They were lifted up because God was bringing His Savior, His Messiah, through them.
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And now He is not just the Savior of the Jews, but He is the Savior of everyone, Jew or Gentile, who believes on His name.
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Thus, when we look in the Old Testament, as Jesus said, we can start with Moses all the way through the prophets and we can see the work of Christ.
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In Genesis, He is the seed of the woman.
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In Exodus, He is the Passover Lamb.
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In Leviticus, He is the High Priest.
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And in Numbers, He is the Star of Jacob.
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In Deuteronomy, He is the prophet like unto Moses.
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In Joshua, He is the Captain of the Lord of Hosts.
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In Judges, He is the Messenger of Jehovah.
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In Ruth, He is our Kinsman, Redeemer.
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In 1 Samuel, He is the Great Judge.
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In 2 Samuel, He is the Princely King.
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In 1 Kings, He is David's choice.
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And in 2 Kings, He is the holiest of all.
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In 1 Chronicles, He is the King by birth.
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And in 2 Chronicles, He is the King by judgment.
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In Ezra, He is seen as Lord of heaven and earth.
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And in Nehemiah, He is the one who brings restoration to His people.
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In Esther, He is the one who gives Himself to save His people.
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In Job, our daysman and our risen returning Redeemer.
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In Psalms, the Son of God and the Good Shepherd.
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In Proverbs, our wisdom.
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In Ecclesiastes, the one who is above the sun.
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In Song of Solomon, the great church lover.
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In Isaiah, He is the suffering and glorified servant.
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In Jeremiah, the Lord of righteousness.
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In Lamentations, the man of sorrows.
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In Ezekiel, the glorious God.
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In Daniel, the smithing stone.
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In the Messiah.
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In Hosea, He is the risen Son of God.
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In Joel, the outpourer of the Spirit.
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In Amos, the eternal Christ.
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In Obadiah, the forgiving Christ.
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In Jonah, He is the risen prophet.
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In Micah, He is the Bethlehemite.
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In Nahum, He is the bringer of good tidings.
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In Habakkuk, the Lord in His holy temple.
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In Zephaniah, He is the merciful Christ.
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In Haggai, the desire of all nations.
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In Zechariah, He is the branch.
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And in Malachi, He is the Son of righteousness with healing in His wings.
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He is the Lord of all the Scriptures.
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He is the Lord of all.
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In all these things, we can see how Christ would have said to His two disciples on the road to Emmaus, here I am from Moses through all the prophets.
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And here is the beautiful part.
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When they were taught all these things, the Scripture says, their eyes were opened and they saw Him and they recognized Him.
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Because up until that time, they had not.
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I wonder if maybe that is you today.
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Maybe you are a person who has yet to recognize Christ as the Lord of your life and the Savior of your soul.
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Maybe the seeing of Christ in the Old Testament has opened your eyes to His truth this morning.
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Maybe your heart has been burning as the Scriptures have been opened to you as their hearts burned in them as the Scripture was opened to them.
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If so, I would like to encourage you to place your faith and trust in Him.
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He is the only way to have assurance of eternal life and glory.
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He is the Lord of glory prophesied in the Old Testament, realized in the New Testament, and able to receive all who come to Him by faith.
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Let's pray.
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Father, we know that it is not through the eloquence of preaching, but it is through the work of Your Spirit that dead souls are made alive.
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Yet, You use the medium of the spoken Word, the preached Word, to bring people's hearts into conviction and to recognize their need for salvation.
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I pray, O Lord, that You would use this morning the words that have been preached to open hearts to move on them, Lord God, so that they might know that they have eternal life in You.
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Lord, if it is Your will, open hearts today to see the truth.
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In Jesus' name we pray, Amen.
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Beloved, stand with us now as we sing.
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And if you have a need for prayer and would like to come, please come.