Prayer:
Thank you Father, for Jesus.
Along with creation, this is the most important fact that affects our lives. So important that it was prophesied over hundreds of years before his birth. There are some obscure prophesies by Moses and the Patriarchs, but the first concrete prophesy that I can think of was to King David. He was told that his son would build him a temple and reign forever. The 'build him a temple' bit could have applied to any number of people (including Soloman, who did), but 'reign for ever'??? That would imply only one thing – the son of God.
There's quite a few prophesies about Jesus' life, death and resurrection, some obscure. But as we are talking about prophesy I want to jump to one about his death. Read Psalm22.
When Jesus was on the cross he quoted the first verse of this prophetic psalm; “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” This chapter is a word for word account of Jesus' death, and it was written 500 years before he was born!
Let's look at a few verses.
v7,8 All who see me mock me;
they make mouths at me; they wag their heads;
"He trusts in the LORD;
let him deliver him; let him rescue him, for he
delights in him!"
v16 they have pierced my hands and feet
v18 they divide my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots.
(my version has a break in the middle of verse 21, and for good reason. The last part is still yet to come. It talks about the coming kingdom and the start of the new age.)
v27All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the LORD, and all the families of the nations shall worship before you.
The first half of the chapter looks at Jesus' death. No one can miss the relationship between what it prophesied and what actually happened.
So now for the big question – why did Jesus die?
I'd be interested to here your comments, so that is the question for this week, but my thoughts are that he died to show that someone who was human (came in the flesh, as recorded in John's letters) was willing to trust God enough to give up his life in the knowledge that only God could raise him again. Jesus had no power to raise himself; he was dead.
And as a result, this showed God that some of mankind were worth saving. We can share in that promise if we accept Jesus by being baptised and trying to follow how he lived his life.