Rom 10:19
But I say, did Israel not know? First Moses says:
“I will provoke you to jealousy by those who are not a nation,
I will move you to anger by a foolish nation."
Rom 10:20
But Isaiah is very bold and says:
“I was found by those who did not seek Me;
I was made manifest to those who did not ask for Me.”
That is not to say that the NT is absolutely required to rightly interpret all OT prophecies....it is not.
Much more than the Gentile Church is hidden in the Old Testament. For a fact, Jesus Himself is forshadowed in the Old Testament. Jesus Himself confirmed the fact that He is in the Old Testament. In
John 5:46 He explained to some religious leaders who had challenged Him that the Old Testament was talking about Him: “If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me.”
The Bible consists of the Old Testament, Scripture before the time of Christ, and a New Testament, Scripture which includes writings about Jesus and His early Church.
But the whole Bible is one story, a story in which God reveals Himself to the world. It’s said that Jesus was being written about, but hidden in the Old Testament and that He was fully revealed in the New Testament. Jesus told us that when Moses and the Prophets of the Old Testament spoke, they were speaking of Him.
As we near Good Friday and Easter, we can see how Jesus' entry into Jerusalem fulfilled the Old Testament teaching of the Passover.
First, we need to understand a little bit about the Jewish Passover Commemoration, the most important celebration of the Jewish faith. The Jewish people were slaves for 400 years in Egypt. In order to free Israel from this slavery, God sent His Angel of Death to kill the first born sons of all Egyptian families. But
to protect themselves, the Israelites were told to splatter lamb’s blood above their doors, and the Angel of Death would pass over, and not harm their families. They would be saved by the blood of the lamb.
God commanded that the Israelites observe a Passover Celebration yearly, as a remembrance that God freed them from slavery of the Egyptians.
During this Passover celebration each Jewish family was to choose a lamb, one that was perfect and without blemish. Not a bone in it’s body was to be broken, but after 4 days this lamb was to be slaughtered and offered to God as a sacrificial offering.
Jesus came to fulfill the Old Covenant Passover in Jerusalem. His entry into Jerusalem would parallel the Jewish Passover and take it to a higher level of God’s Plan of Salvation.
Understand that when Jesus entered Jerusalem, the city and it’s temple were the very center of all Jewish religious worship. And when Jesus entered the city it was the time of the Jewish Passover Celebration and the crowds in the city were huge.
As He approached the city, a great multitude came out to Him.
The crowd went wild and chose Him as the promised Messiah of God, the One for whom they had waited thousands of years. And Jesus was the Lamb of God, perfect and without the blemish of any sin.
Jesus entered Jerusalem and four days later, Jesus, the Lamb of God was crucified and sacrificed for the delivery of man from the death of their sins. And at the very time that Jesus was being crucified, the slaughter of the Passover lambs had begun in Jerusalem.
And to hasten Jesus’ death, it was ordered to break the bones in His legs. But, instead a spear was thrust into His side and it was clear that He was already dead.
And so not a bone in His body was broken.
Man would be freed from the slavery of sin and saved by the Blood of the True Lamb of God. The perfect sacrificial offering to God, for the atonement of our sins.
As a side note, when Jesus entered Jerusalem, tears were in His eyes. It wasn’t because of the cross which awaited Him, but because of the woes that would come to those whom He came to save and who rejected Him.
Instead, His tears were for the people of Jerusalem. Jesus said, “If only you had known on this great day the way that leads to peace. But, no, it is hidden from your sight.”
He looked beyond His own suffering and fixed His eyes on the city that would reject Him, His love, and His mercy. His tears for the people of the city showed Him as a Lord of love who would offer men salvation, but Jesus would never take away the free will of the people to reject Him. It will always be man’s freedom, our freedom of choice to accept or reject Jesus and His teachings.
But in rejecting Jesus, men destroy themselves. In denying Jesus it is themselves, their cities, and their nations that they bring to ruin. Jerusalem turned on Jesus, the city rejected and crucified Him four days after He entered the city.
Only forty years later, the Romans attacked Jerusalem and slaughtered almost all of its inhabitants, over one million people. The Jewish temple, the center of Old Testament worship was razed to the ground, completely destroyed, never to be rebuilt.
The rejection of Jesus was the cause of the destruction of Jerusalem.
But a new religion, a New Covenant would rapidly spread across the world. That religion was Christianity. This religion offers the gift of Jesus mercy and salvation to all who accept Jesus and His teachings, to you and me.
Despite all of Jesus’ humiliations and sufferings that He underwent in Jerusalem, His visit to the city turned out to be a great victory for our sakes. He accomplished the reconciliation of heaven and earth and opened the gates of heaven to us.
Saved by the Blood of the Lamb of God.
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