Father, we thank you for Jesus, and his life as an example to us.
The reading for this week's lesson is Isaiah 53, but as we've covered the crucifixion so much in the past few weeks I thought we'd have a look at some of the other prophesies to do with his life and ministry . (We're covering the kingdom and activities of other nations over the next two weeks, so we'll leave those for now).
The first one I want to look at is probably the shortest exhortation/sermon/lecture that anyone has ever heard at any church. It is also perfect in that it gets people to think. (If no one thinks about what they have heard, then there's no point in listening!) It's recorded in Luke 4:18,19. He Jesus was reading from the Book of Isaiah (ch61 v1). His response was “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” The reason why I'm starting with this one is that when you read the prophesy, it perfectly describes just what Jesus was doing. Jesus was the Saviour!
The second aspect is that Jesus fulfilled prophesies. Isaiah said Jesus would do lots of things and because the prophetic message came from God, Jesus did. Isaiah said Jesus would start his ministry in Galilee (Isa9:1,2), he prophesied about his death and resurrection (Isa53). There's many more, such as about his birth, etc but we'll leave them for now.
The third aspect I want to look at is that both Isaiah and Jesus gave the same message. Of course they did. God gave the message to Isaiah and Jesus came to spread God's message. When talking today about God some people have very strong views that the Old Testament is dead and doesn't matter, the new message is all about forgiveness in the 'anything goes' world that we live in. Nothing could be further from the truth. God's message is the same throughout the whole Bible. Jesus reinforces the Old Testament especially with the amount of “have you not read ...” and similar references. Jesus came to fulfil the law (Matt 5:17 - “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfil them.”) We can't just pick and chose which parts we want to believe in and which parts we don't.
Jesus came as promised, just as God said he would through the prophets. He will also return again as this also has been promised to us.
Here's a few verses for you to look up. For each of the following verses let me know just how Jesus relates to the following verses, what he did to show the he fulfilled the prophesy and teachings that God showed to Isaiah.