Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or
the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfil them (Matthew
5:17).
The Jews of the 1st century knew that their Bible – the Tanakh, our Old Testament (OT) – was a story without an ending.
It was unfinished. Incomplete. Partial and awaiting a
climactic conclusion.
After all, the book of Malachi – the final book in our OT – concludes with this adamant and menacing warning: “I will come and strike the land with a curse” (4:6).
In the time of Jesus, the last book in the Tanakh – like the Jewish Bible today – was probably Chronicles (a combination of our 1st
and 2nd Chronicles). It intensely, dramatically concludes with the
destruction of the Holy City, Jerusalem, at the hands of the Babylonians in 586
BC (2 Chronicles 26).
To any Jewish reader this violent, unexpected, and unsatisfying ending represented a story that is clearly unfinished – a narrative of God making promises, or covenants (with Adam and Eve, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David) that remained unfulfilled.
The Lord pledges to send the Messiah thereby committing to redeem and restore Israel, save those who respond to His Gospel from Gentile nations, and re-establish David’s monarchy.
But then the story abruptly terminates.
After a constant communication from the Lord to Israel through His prophets for 1000 years – from Moses to Malachi – the Word of God goes quiet.
Four centuries of eery, ominous, tentative silence.
Consequently, by the time of the 1st century – with Israel now under the oppressive thumb of Rome – the early chapters of the Gospels portray God-fearing Jewish people wondering, waiting, watching for the next interval of God’s intervention.
Or, would Yahweh now be forever silent in response to Israel’s disobedience and wanton disregard of covenant stipulations?
Then, bursting onto the scene – and providing optimism and hope – was John the Baptist!
His was a dramatic, but short period of ministry – probably measured in mere months.
John’s meteoric rise to prominence – the last in a long line of authoritative prophets looking ahead to the Messiah – was suddenly terminated. And to the horror of his Jewish disciples, John was imprisoned and martyred by Herod Antipas during the early phase of the public ministry of Jesus.
Jesus identified John as the Elijah who was to come as predicted in the final paragraph of Malachi’s prophecy: See, I will send you
the prophet Elijah before that great and dreadful day of the LORD comes (4:5).
Consequently, John was the final forerunner of the
Messiah; in a sense, John was the final OT prophet.
The long-awaited Kingdom of God was about to be
inaugurated.
But the Messiah introduced 2 significant concepts – both developed in the pages of the New Testament – that most expectant Jews had never
anticipated in the study of their Scriptures:
1) the Messiah would be the Suffering Servant. Even Jesus’ closest disciples were aghast and confused at the prospect that He – the Messiah of predicted conquest and victory – would first suffer as the Lamb of God, the ultimate Sacrifice for sin.
2) and, His deity. That the Messiah would be great – the greatest Man ever – was a long-cherished Hebrew hope. He would rise to supremacy above the patriarchs, kings and prophets of Israel. However, I’m convinced almost nobody saw that the Messianic expectation would be fulfilled as the enfleshment of God – Jesus the God-Man.
As we from our vantage-point, read the OT, these concepts
seem obvious.
But as the redemptive story concludes, even the most God-loving, Messiah-expecting Jews had to learn what the prophets had predicted: that Jesus of Nazareth – the homeless, peasant, disparaged rabbi – was the consummation of those ancient promises, covenants, predictions.
He was the Son of God, the Son of Man.
He is God-Man.
And so Jesus proclaimed in the Sermon on the Mount: I
tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter,
not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until
everything is accomplished (Matthew 5:18).
Takeaway: many contemporary Christ-followers
ignore the OT as being remote, confusing, inaccessible, and difficult to read
through.
It is therefore, too often ignored.
However, the true biblical student realizes the Jewish
Bible is the essential, if lengthy, prologue to the life and ministry of the
Lord Jesus.
That is why the ancient theologian Augustine (4th
century AD) summarized about the Bible: "The New is in the Old Concealed, the Old is in the New
Revealed".
~ graphic from blogs.timesofisrrael.com
* this post last appeared in May 2021
