Jesus in the Old Testament

Friday, 4 May 2007

When growing up as a young boy and then as a teen in church, one of the struggles and challenges I had when reading the Bible was the Old Testament books such as Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, as well as the "minor prophets" like Habakkuk, Nahum and Obadiah.

I believe the Sunday School teachers and even the pastors also struggled with this, because many a times, the lessons or sermons lifted from the Old Testament would centre around familiar stories like Noah and the flood, David and Goliath, Daniel in the lions' den, and so on.

When I was in the MYF, Jeff Khaw, my bible study leader would tell us that whenever we read an Old Testament book, we should ask ourselves, where is Jesus in this, since everything is supposed to point forward to the cross (whereas the New Testament would point backward to the cross).

I am therefore very grateful to listen to JPM sermons because he has been anointed by the Lord to bring out Christ in each and every passage of the bible. I just heard a sermon entitled "Jesus, the Champion of the Ages", and would like to share insights on this.

Over the next 2 weeks or so, I will share about what I have learnt about Jesus in the Old Testament.

The very first hint of Jesus in the Scriptures is found in Gen 1:26.

26 Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground."

Here we see God being referred to in the plural pronoun "us", meaning God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit!

The Holy Spirit is mentioned even earlier in Gen 1:2, viz
2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

...but that is a topic for another day.

Coming back to the person of Jesus. His existence in the beginning is confirmed in John 1:1, where the apostle writes "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. We know that the Word here refers to Jesus because later on in John 1:14, John tells us that "the Word became flesh and dwelled among men".

Tomorrow, I will blog about the very first prophesy in the Bible (which also speaks about Jesus).