EMMAUS SCHOOL OF BIBLICAL STUDIES

Do any of you know anyone who loves Jesus and wants to know his word for themselves?  These are the two characteristics that are so important for students wanting to do the ESBS.  It is a hard program that demands ongoing self-discipline and perseverance, but ask anyone of the ESBS graduates, and they will tell you that nothing of great reward does not come without great cost.  There is truly great reward in pressing into the Lord and his word, gaining understanding that will provide a harvest of righteousness both now and in the future.

Please send people our way.  We are looking for potential students.  And you as the reader of the blog are those who will connect us with people hungry for the Word and to know Jesus.

Send them to camplurecrest.org/esbs for more information and to download applications.  They can also inquire at esbs_info@camplurecrest.org for more information.

In reflecting on this past year, we had a small school, but it was sooo great!  Each of the three girls, as you can read were deeply affected and changed by the Word of God this year.  What better reward than knowing that we’ve come alongside what the Lord is up to with their lives?  We were blessed to have you Madison, Christen, and Julie this year.  We will miss this small family unit that we’ve had these past 10 months, but we are blessed to know that the Lord is leading you on to other things as young women who love God and know their Bibles well.  You’ve got some serious firepower in godly character, knowing God and loving him, and being full of his Spirit!

 

                Matthew was the last book of the Bible that we studied this year and even though we have been studying all of the Old Testament up until this point, the teachers felt it appropriate to study Matthew last because Jesus is the fulfillment of the prophesies of the Old Testament and this becomes most visible in the book of Matthew.  Because of these crucial fulfillments, pointing to the fact that Jesus really was the Messiah, it was part of our assignment to compare the thoughts of a first century Jew and what they thought the Messiah was going to be like to what Jesus was like, in order to prove that Jesus was in fact the very same person the Old Testament prophets were foretelling would come.

                First of all, let me tell you about the nature of Jesus. His nature was gentle, humble and loving.  He was born in humble settings, in a manger in an animal stall (Luke 2:16), and was born into unfortunate circumstances because his mother was a virgin but was believed to not be so when she had her son (Matthew 1:18). Both of these things, however, were prophesied in the OT in (Isaiah 7:14). Then when Jesus began his ministry he came in town walking on the road from Nephtali and Zebulum (Isaiah 9:1) which was of course the area that Assyria came from when they were on their way to conquer Judah.  First century Jews were expecting that the Messiah would come from this area in the north (which stands for judgment) but could have over looked the fact that he still came from the north but just didn’t come with a huge army trailing behind him. Again Jesus the Messiah made a humble entrance not one of arrogance and pride.  One of the advantages of a king is that they are the ones served, so I am sure the first century Jews were expecting the Messiah to come and be served by everyone but this was not Jesus’ mission at all. Instead of being served, Jesus came to serve and he did it daily as he healed many of their demonic spirits, leprosy, blindness, etc. of the people (Matthew 8:1; 21:14; 9:27 ).  This should not have come as a surprise first century Jews, however, because this idea that the Messiah was going to come and heal people in this way was prophesied almost verbatim in Isaiah 42:7. Finally, when Jesus was betrayed, arrested and hung on the cross, he had more than enough power to free himself, but chose to go peacefully, encouraging his disciples to act in similar accord (Matthew 26:54).  This too was prophesied in Isaiah 53:7 in the same passage that Jesus serving others was spoken.  Jesus came in peace, even to the very end.  So as you see, the nature of the Messiah was not different from what the scriptures proclaimed it to be, but quite the exact replica.  Jesus came to love not fight.

                The last thing I want to say to help explain how Jesus was the Messiah predicted to come in the Old Testament, is Jesus’ mission. From the time Jesus was old enough, he was preaching in the temple and teaching the most holy priests things they never knew about God (Luke2:46-51). Jesus’ entire ministry was reaching out to the lowly to break social barriers, to heal those who were sick and to tell bring the message of salvation and the kingdom to come (Matthew 13:36-50).   It is true that the Jews suffered much oppression and trials and you were expecting that the Messiah was going to bring justice, but the justice they were looking for came in a different form. Jesus served justice but through peaceful means and not by sword (Matthew 26:56).  This of course is fulfilling the words of the prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 53:7). While Jesus was coming to bring justice it was not in the manner they thought and the ultimate justice was not to be served until the final days which Jesus was preaching about, prophesied about in Daniel 7:13.  Even more than bringing justice, Jesus’ greatest mission was to bring salvation to both Jews and Gentiles.  The first century Jews believed that salvation was for the Jews because they were God’s chosen people but in fact it was prophesied in the Old Testament as well that those who were not of Jewish descent would come to the Lord too (Isaiah 11:11- 13).  I understand that according to the ways of the world, salvation to you is a great king coming and conquering an enemy, and the thing is that Jesus did this but the enemy was sin and he did not use the sword to do this but used his own crucified body (Matthew 26:56).  This is also found in Isaiah 53:7 to see that Jesus’ would be lead away to the slaughter and the end product was salvation.  Jesus was not concerned with gaining physical land like a normal king would be but Jesus was concerned with conquering hearts and bringing them into his eternal kingdom in heaven (Matthew4:17-20).  There was much talk about the end times in (Amos 5:18; Zephaniah 1:14, Malachi 4:1, etc.) and these references are talking about the heavenly kingdom that Jesus was to bring people into when the day of the Lord came.  Jesus’ mission was to conquer, bring justice and salvation but the way he did this was by attacking sin and the human heart.

                There are so many other minute details that prove Jesus to be the true Messiah, even going back to the book of Genesis but if you get too caught up in the details, you miss the whole point.  Jesus’ mission was to wins hearts and to free his people from their sin and we are all forever indebted to him for what he did.  My prayer for myself and others is just that we can read the Old Testament and gain a better understanding of who God was to Israel and what it meant to them to have a savior so that we can better understand what it means to us that Jesus died on the cross.  I am so thankful for these past nine months and the freedom I have had to read and understand the Bible the way I have.  The Bible is more than a book to adorn a bookshelf, it is a collection of people, events and emotions that give people the purpose on earth and peace in looking into the future in heaven!

The ministry of Jesus took the Jewish world by surprise, because he didn’t appear at all to match their long-held expectations. The 1^st century Jew had been taught all the prophecies and Old Testament history, but never imagined that Jesus would fulfill them in the way that he did. The Jews expected Jesus to be a literal King who would come and deliver them from the Romans; they interpreted their Old Testament prophecies in a literal way, and didn’t understand that Jesus would come to save them from their real enemy – sin! Therefore when Jesus came to the world, they had a hard time understanding how he fulfilled all the Old Testament prophecies that he quoted so frequently.

            However, the fact is that Jesus did fulfill all the prophets’ words perfectly, and didn’t abolish one law of God at all! For example, Jesus’ life was a complete fulfillment of Israel’s Old Testament history, for even at the beginning of his life, he was taken to Egypt, which symbolized slavery for the Jews. The Jews would have immediately recognized that just as Jesus came out of Egypt as a small child and then spent his whole life in complete perfection, this represented what God had wanted for the nation of Israel when they were enslaved in Egypt for 400 years, but grumbled and complained when God delivered them from it! The Jews had no hint of perfection about them, yet Jesus lived his life completely righteous and perfect! Thus, Jesus was the image and representation of the TRUE Israel that they should have been.

When Jesus moved to Nazareth with his parents, and grew up there, he was called a Nazorean, which literally translates as “the branch”. Thus, all the prophecies of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, etc. who had foretold of “a branch” coming to save and conquer the Jews’ enemies, were still being fulfilled in Jesus, just not at all the way the Jews expected them to be! The Jews thought Jesus would be famous, popular, and strong, so that he would overthrow their physical enemies. How surprising when he appeared the exact opposite – humble and loving, yet strong in God. Thus, he fulfilled these prophecies of “the branch” as well.

When Jesus left Nazareth and moved to the land of Capernaum, he was fulfilling another prophecy that spoke of that land, which had once received horrific judgment from God in the Old Testament, but was now receiving grace, freedom, and forgiveness as Jesus dwelt among them! Therefore, Jesus was showing the Jews that He was God himself, coming to dwell among them, in order to have a relationship with them! That is what he had been longing for throughout the entire history of Israel, and that was what he was there to give them.

Then, Jesus began to demonstrate His power by healing physical illnesses, but instead of merely being a miracle worker, he was really showing the Jews that His power was not at all limited to their physical realm. Instead, he was demonstrating the fact that he could and would, heal their very spirits from the sickness of sin! Therefore, he blasted out of all their expectations of what a Messiah would be, for he was much greater then just a physical king reigning in Jerusalem; he was the very God of their lives, dwelling among them to heal, not only their bodies on occasion, but also their spirits forever!

The sign of Jonah that Jesus gave the Jews, would have caused them to remember the judgment that Jonah received by being swallowed by a fish, and how he was essentially raised to life once he was spit out by it. Therefore, Jesus was giving them this crucial sign that God would place the judgment of the sinful world upon his shoulders for three days and nights, and then he would rise to life again, King of kings! Thus, the Messiah that the Jews expected was far more powerful then they had anticipated!

Throughout his 3-year ministry, Jesus made the religious rulers frustrated because instead of praising them for their self-righteousness, he told them that they would never truly know and understand God unless they had a relationship with Him. Therefore, they needed understanding from God, and shouldn’t think they could follow God on their own, apart from Him! Thus, the Jews totally underestimated Jesus, because they didn’t realize he was the very Son of God, bringing peace to them and restoring the broken relationship that mankind once had with God. They had thought the Messiah would just be a political ruler; and didn’t understand that the way Jesus fulfilled all these OT prophecies was spelling out to them that He WAS the Messiah, but more than that, the Son of God!

Thus, throughout his lifetime Jesus was able to give a clear picture of his fulfillment of the prophecies that God had spoken to the prophets in the Old Testament. He demonstrated these things so that the Jews would know and believe that He was their Messiah, yet many still were blinded! It should have been very apparent to them, yet they chose to believe their own preconceived ideas instead of the truth.

Therefore let it be known that Jesus Christ IS the Messiah, the Son of God Himself, and that he DID fulfill all prophecies, and has restored mankind to a right relationship with God, if they will only choose it.