Christ In All The Scriptures
Christ In All The Scriptures
Yeow Chin Kiong
Even among many non-Christians Jesus Christ has been, and continues to be, regarded as a great teacher,- an educator. Like His disciples, Jesus' mainly-Jewish audience called Jesus "Teacher" (eg. Mark 4:38, or "Rabbi" or "Rabboni" in their native language, John 20:16). Jesus Himself accepted the title (Matthew 23:8, 10). We have His teachings preserved for us mainly in the four accounts of the Gospel where He is the captivating itinerant teacher of dozens of parables, the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5 to 7), the sermon of Woes to Hypocrites (Matthew 23) and the Olivet Discourse (Matthew 24 and 25).
However, we often miss one of our Lord's lengthy, comprehensive "masterclasses" reported in scripture. It was a survey of all Old Testament scriptures with a focus on what God's inspired word has said about Him in prophecy and figures of speech hundred of years before His incarnation to that class of two students as they journeyed the seven-mile road from Jerusalem to Emmaus village (Luke 24:13-32). If that class had been titled, it would be called, "Christ In All The Scriptures," for "... beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself." (Luke 24:27). We really don't know how long that class lasted as they travelled on foot but both "students" were obviously moved in mind and heart at the end of the class! "And they said to one another, 'Did not our heart burn within us while He talked with us on the road, and while He opened the Scriptures to us?'" (Luke 24:32).
Recognising it was their Lord Who had conducted the "masterclass", the two disciples (meaning "learners") immediately returned to Jerusalem and there excitedly declared to the eleven apostles (minus Judas Iscariot), and other disciples gathered with them, of their meeting with the risen Christ (Luke 24:35). We don't know whether the two disciples had begun to recount Jesus' "masterclass" with them when their Lord appeared in the midst of the startled but overjoyed assembly (Luke 24:36-43). After a short meal, Jesus repeated the "masterclass" to the larger audience of disciples (Luke 24:48).
What our Lord did in His masterclass that brought an emotional response of great joy (Luke 24:32, 41 and possibly 52) was to go through all of inscripturated revelation inherited by the Jews of His day (corresponding to the 39 books of our Old Testament) to point out where He was either directly or indirectly (in figurative reference or prophecy) mentioned in those books. Such a necessary exercise of "scriptural cross-referencing" was to show evidence of God's more-than-a-millennia-long preparation of the Divine plan of man's salvation through the sacrifice of His only-begotten son of the cross in Jerusalem in the first third of the First Century A.D. A vastly-intricate network of seemingly separate and distinct happenings worked in harmony across time and space to eventually result in the Gospel plan of salvation. Divinely-inspired individuals who penned the scriptural record spread throughout the 39 books had to be contented with the fact that they were writing for a future age to discover and decipher,- our age, the Christian dispensation (1 Peter 1:10-12; 2 Peter 1:19-21).
Christians should show their gratitude for Jesus' "masterclass" by learning and then teaching it to others as an apologetic prelude to communicating the Gospel and calling for obedience to it (Mark 16:15-16). As the apostle Peter recounted the record of fulfilled prophecy from the Old Testament to call for faithful obedience to the Gospel in the present age (Acts 3:12-26), so should we. Brethren, let us prepare ourselves to do just this by learning what each and every book of the Old Testament says,- or even hints,- about the first coming of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ! This will lay the foundation for a subsequent sermon series on Jesus Christ in all the scriptures of the New Testament.