On the night before Jesus died, Judas led the chief priests men to Him in the Garden.
Jesus replied, “Do what you came for, friend.”
Then the men stepped forward, seized Jesus and arrested him. With that, one of Jesus’ companions reached for his sword, drew it out and struck the servant of the high priest, cutting off his ear.
“Put your sword back in its place,” Jesus said to him, “for all who draw the sword will die by the sword. Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels? But how then would the Scriptures be fulfilled that say it must happen in this way?” (Matthew 26:50-54)
In other words, Jesus died because of the Old Testament. The Old Testament was not a mistake, irrelevant, or secondary. No, Jesus says the Old Testament Scriptures are the foundation of everything!
The Old Testament Scriptures were the reason Jesus was born to a virgin. They are the reason He performed His miracles. They were the reason he came to Jerusalem on a colt. And they are the reason that night in the Garden, instead of calling 12 legions of angels, Jesus stood up from His prayer and began His march to the cross.
Jesus came and He died, not to destroy God’s law, but to fulfill it. The Law and the Prophets were the foundation that His Kingdom was built on. The Old Testament is not a mistake. It didn’t need to be corrected or replaced.
As a Christian, I can look to the Old Testament and see just how much God loves His people. I can see how forcefully He will fight for them and the lengths He will go to forgive them. The Old Testament God is my God. He is the same as the New Testament One, a God of righteousness and grace.
And through the Old Testament I can see that we haven’t always been willing recipients of that grace. I see it in the history of the Old Testament and I can see it in my own life too.
But thank God the story doesn’t end in Malachi.
Today, we should read the Old Testament, study it, pray on it, rejoice in it, but God forbid we stop with it.
Jesus didn’t come to destroy the Law and the Prophets, but thank God He fulfilled them.
Jesus allowed the nails to be driven through His hands on that cross, not because God made a mistake when He met Moses on that mountain, but because the Law always pointed to Him. Right now, we have an opportunity to join Him in the fulfillment of the Old Testament, to join Him in His death, burial and resurrection and enter into the Kingdom the prophets promised.
As Paul wrote to the Romans,
Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.
Because Jesus fulfilled the Scripture, we can have newness of life! Thank God the story continued and repent and be baptized today!
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