“You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me” (John 5:39). Jesus was speaking about what we today call the Old Testament; the New Testament had not yet been written. Many people think Jesus is only in the New Testament, but here He tells us: You find Me also in the Old Testament.
The early church took that to heart. Jesus’ disciples scoured the Old Testament to find prophecies fulfilled by His coming. Go to church Sunday and you’ll hear evidence of their searching. In many churches the Old Testament reading will be from Isaiah, one Old Testament book the early church went to over and over again. “A voice cries, ‘In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God’” (Isaiah 40:3). Then Sunday’s Gospel reading will be from Mark: “The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. As it is written in Isaiah the prophet, “Behold, I send my messenger before your face who will prepare your way, the voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’ John appeared....” (Mark 1:2-4). Mark quotes from Malachi 3:1 and Isaiah 40:3. In John the Baptist, the forerunner of Jesus, the early church found one fulfillment of prophecy.
Page through the New Testament and notice all the Old Testament quotations and allusions. This wasn’t an academic exercise for the first disciples. By His teachings, miracles, death and resurrection, Jesus convinced the disciples that He is, as Mark says, “the Son of God.” Faith motivated them to search the Old Testament to see Jesus. Might faith in Jesus motivate you to read about Him in Isaiah?
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