Did the New Testament Writers Misuse
Old Testament Scriptures?
Before we begin we will have a few moments of silent prayer so we can
all make sure we are in fellowship ready to focus and ready to concentrate.
Trust me, this class and probably the next one there is going to be a lot of
new material, some new material, but I taught the Framework many times, so
you'll get some new additional information on that that will be good for
everyone to go through, but it does get a little technical. But it is good to
go through this. I taught this for about 30 years and I find it one of my
favorite topics to teach because it helps us understand the Word so much. So,
with that, let's have a few moments of silent prayer and then I will open in
prayer.
Our Father, we are so very grateful that we have this opportunity that
we can come together three times a week to focus upon You,
to study Your Word, to reflect upon the eternal principles of Your Word. That in this we are grounded in that which has eternal value.
And Father, we are thankful that as we study through this series on Your Plan
for the Ages it gives us focus on the past and the present, and that everything
in history is driving toward a purpose that You have established from eternity
past. Each dispensation has a distinct purpose, distinct characteristics, and
it is designed to teach and instruct us with regard to Your grace, with regard
to faith in our dependence upon You, and with regard to the way You provide for
us. And above all, to emphasize that there is nothing that we can do on our
own; that we have to be totally dependent upon You in
order to have life work. The only way to be oriented to life is to be oriented
to the reality of Your creation as You have designed
it. So, Father, as we continue our study, help us as we think through the
Scriptures tonight in some different challenging ways that we can be better
students of Your Word and we pray this in Christ's Name, Amen.
Let's open our Bibles initially tonight to Acts 2. We will look at a
couple of different passages tonight, just pop around a little bit, but we will
start with Acts 2 and I encourage you as I do on occasion to make notes in your
Bible, make notes in the margins, and you can daisy chain some of the Scripture
references that I go to. Acts 2, in terms of fitting this in our study of
dispensations, is a critical passage in terms of understanding the church age
and how the church age fits within this panorama that began in the Old
Testament. In Genesis 12, when God called Abram and set aside the Jewish people
as a distinct group through whom He would work to bless all the nations; and
that had a shift that occurred in terms of God's plan for the ages. As we have
studied from the creation up until the call of Abram, there was only one ethnic
group essentially and that is the Gentiles. But when God called Abram that
started a distinct group through whom God would work;
a group through whom He would reveal Himself. He would reveal Scripture. They
would be responsible for writing down Scripture and preserving Scripture down
through the ages. It was through them that the Messiah would come.
As you go through the Old Testament there is the progress and the
development of an understanding of this messianic thread that runs through the
Old Testament. From the very first protoevangelium as
it is called, the first mention of the Gospel in Genesis 3:15; that through the
Seed of the woman the seed of the serpent would be defeated. And you trace that
word "Seed" as you go down through the Old Testament and it relates
again and again to the Messiah. There are additional prophecies that are given
in relation to the Messiah and there are also prophecies given in relation to
the future of God's people Israel. There are prophecies related to their future
glory where they will be restored to their land. There is the warning that they
would be disobedient; that they would fail; that they succumb to idolatry and
God would remove them from the land. These cycles of discipline we have
studied, Leviticus 26, Deuteronomy 28-29, but then there is the promise of
restoration that is embedded in Deuteronomy 30. Deuteronomy 29-30, as we have
studied recently, outlines the land promise, the Land covenant that God had
promised to Israel.
In the Abrahamic
covenant there were three components:
1. God promised a piece of real estate that
would be the eternal possession of the Jewish people.
2. There would be a seed, the seed promise, the descendents to Abraham that they would be innumerable
like the stars of the sky or the sands of the sea.
3. And through them there would be worldwide
blessing.
This land promise was expanded in this Land covenant of Deuteronomy 29.
The seed promise was expanded in the covenant with David in 2 Samuel 7. That
God would provide a descendent who would sit upon the
throne of David, rule from the throne of David in Jerusalem; a literal throne
in a literal city and establish a literal kingdom for Israel that would go into
perpetuity. It was a part of the same eternal covenant as the Abrahamic
covenant. And the when that was fulfilled, as we've been studying, when the
Land covenant is fulfilled and the Jewish people are fully restored to the
land, at that time the Messiah comes, we believe the second time, establishing
His kingdom on the earth as the Son of David establishing His rule from
Jerusalem. And the, finally, there is the establishment of the spiritual aspect
of those covenants, the New covenant, which is related to the changed spiritual
life of the Jewish people. This is in Jeremiah 31:31-34. Those three come
together.
Now when you get into the New Testament, as we studied last time, the
time, the dispensation of the Messiah, when Jesus came and offered Himself as
the Messiah. He was the one who would bring in the kingdom. He was a descendent
of David. He was qualified; He fit this prophetic parameter; that's the focal
point of the Gospels that fits those prophetic parameters, then He was rejected
by His people, crucified as a blasphemer for claiming to be the king of the
Jews, claiming to be God, and then on the third day He is risen from the dead,
a validation from God that He was indeed the promised Messiah. In Acts 2, which
is on the day of Pentecost, 50 days after the day of Passover, this is when the
church is born as a new distinct entity. And something distinct happens there.
We have studied this in the past in our study of Acts.
Starting in Acts 2:1, "When the day of Pentecost had come they
were all together in one place …" That refers to the disciples not to the
120 who had met earlier. "… suddenly there came
from heaven a noise like a violent rushing wind. It filled the whole house
where they were sitting." So there's this huge noise like a tornado coming
through the house and there is a visual element to this, "And there
appeared to them as if tongues of fire, flames of fire, over each of them, over
each of the disciples, and they were filled with the Holy Spirit." There
is a new event that occurs spiritually. God the Holy Spirit indwelt each of
those disciples and they began to speak as an objective validating aspect. They
began to speak in other languages. These weren't mystical languages; this wasn't
ecstatic utterance. They were speaking in other languages and then they went
out from there to the temple and as they are talking to those on the temple
grounds about Jesus as the Messiah and what has happened, we are told in Acts
2:6 that each one was hearing them in their own language. This is validating
the fact that they were speaking a dialect or a language; they weren't just
speaking in some sort of ecstatic gibberish.
They were raising the question when they heard these supposedly
uneducated Galileans speaking in these various languages. In Acts 2:8 they
raised the question, "how is it that we each hear them in our own language
to which we were born? Parthians and Medes and Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea, and
Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia,
Egypt and the districts of Libya, … Rome… Jews and proselytes, Cretans and
Arabs …" They hear them in their own tongues. So they come from all over
and there are estimates, based upon Josephus, he may have exaggerated, that
over a million Jews would come to Jerusalem during Passover or during
Pentecost. The streets were just swelled with all these pilgrims that would
come for these dates. So the question is, what is going on here? Everybody is
asking questions about the disciples and what they are saying. And Peter, who
is one of the eleven, stood up and he opened up with a sermon explaining what
was going on.
Acts 2:14 we have the address. He says, "Men of Judea and to all
who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you and give heed to my words. For
these men are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only the third hour of the day …" Nine o'clock in the morning.
"… but this is what was spoken of through the
prophet Joel." Now this is really what I am focusing on. What does Peter
mean when he says this is what Joel said? Because he then
quotes from Joel 2:28-32. Now Joel is one of the Twelve. In the English
Bible we refer them as the Minor Prophets, not because they are less
significant, but because they are small. And Joel writes specifically with
regard to the end times, the last days in Jewish prophetic plan. He is talking
about what will happen at the "end of days." He writes and this is
what Peter is quoting from the Septuagint: " 'AND IT SHALL BE
IN THE LAST DAYS,' GOD SAYS, 'THAT I WILL POUR FORTH OF MY SPIRIT ON ALL
MANKIND; AND YOUR SONS AND YOUR DAUGHTERS SHALL PROPHESY…' "
Is that what is going on here on the day of Pentecost? No. The only
thing that we see on the day of Pentecost is that they are speaking in tongues.
So Peter is reading from this in Joel 2:28, "YOUR SONS AND
DAUGHTERS SHALL PROPHESY." Nobody is prophesying on
the day of Pentecost. "YOUR YOUNG MEN SHALL SEE VISIONS".
No young men are dreaming dreams or seeing visions. "YOUR OLD
MEN SHALL DREAM DREAMS; AND ALSO MY MEN SERVANTS AND ALL MY MAIDSERVENTS I WILL
POUR OUT MY SPIRIT ON THOSE DAYS AND THEY SHALL PROPHESY. Acts 2:19 Peter
goes on to say, "AND I WILL GRANT WONDERS IN THE SKY
ABOUVE AND SIGNS ON THE EARTH BELOW, BLOOD, AND FIRE, AND VAPOR OF SMOKE. 'THE
SUN WILL BE TURNED INTO DARKNESS AND THE MOON INTO BLOOD, BEFORE THE GREAT AND
GLORIOUS DAY OF THE LORD SHALL COME.' " So what Peter is talking
about in this quote from Joel 2:28-31 is what happens immediately preceding
this end time cataclysmic event when the day of the Lord comes and brings
judgment on all of the enemies of Israel, rescues Israel from virtual
destruction or pending destruction, and establishes them in the land.
Peter is saying in this sermon, this is what Joel is talking about. So
what does it mean that this is what Joel is talking about? Because what has
happened there on the day of Pentecost with these new Christians, these messianics, are speaking in these unlearned languages, but
that is not even mentioned in Joel 2. Joel 2 mentions many other things,
dreaming dreams, visions, signs in the heavens, signs on the earth, none of
those things are happening on the day of Pentecost. In fact, the only thing
that happens on the day of Pentecost is not mentioned in Joel 2. So how can
Peter be saying this? What is he talking about? It is quotes like this in the
New Testament that have caused, especially liberal Christians, but there are
some conservatives as well, as to how they handle this, think that New Testament
writers misused and distorted Old Testament Scripture. And we look at passages
where you read a New Testament writer who ways this is the fulfillment of
something stated in the Old Testament Scripture, and you go back and you read
the Old Testament Scripture and you sort of scratch your head and say I am not
sure I would have gotten that out of that.
This has raised the issue in the study of interpretation or
hermeneutics on how the New Testament quotes or uses the Old Testament. This is
important because in light of where we have gone, we have studied up to this
point God's plan for mankind in terms of His plan leading up to the time of
Abraham, from Abraham up to the time of the cross, and now we are going to be
looking at the present church age, and we will be going on into looking into
God's plan for Israel, and that God is still going to fulfill these promises
and these prophecies that He made to Israel. He hasn't rejected Israel; that is
what is known as replacement theology. We saw a horrible example of that just
recently when the Presbyterian Church of the USA voted to divest all
investments in anything that the Israelis were involved in. This is an
outgrowth of replacement theology. Replacement theology means that basically
the Jews are no longer God's people; they are no longer
biblically, prophetically, or historically significant, which is not what the
Bible teaches, we believe. Therefore, that becomes and has become over history
the seedbed out of which much Christian anti-Semitism came.
Now that is not true for evangelical Christians because we have a
different view of the Bible. We are very similar to orthodox Jews in that we
interpret the Bible literally. We believe the Bible is the direct revelation of
God through the prophets of the Old Testament and the apostles in the New Testament,
and that God so inspired or worked through the individual writers of Scripture
that without overriding their individual personalities, their individual
writing style, their individual background, that God guaranteed and oversaw
their writing so that He could guarantee that what they wrote was without
error. So we believe that what God revealed is inerrant and infallible both in
terms of the Old Testament and in terms of the New Testament. That means that
we seem to have a problem, some people think, when we come to passages such as
Acts 2 quoting Joel 2, that somehow the writers of the New Testament were
playing fast and loose with the passages from the Old Testament. Because if you
go back and you read the context of these Old Testament prophecies, sometimes
it looks like, well how did they get that to apply to the situation they are
talking about in the New Testament?
So this becomes an important thing to study. Those who do not believe
as we do; those who would hold to various forms of replacement theology,
believe that the New Testament writers just quote these Old Testament passages
in ways that completely redefine the meaning of those Old Testament passages so
that they are no longer being interpreted by the New Testament writers in a
literal sense. We believe, much as many orthodox Jews do, that the Bible should
be interpreted literally. That refers to literal, historical events that
occurred in the past. Now what many Christians are unaware of is that in
rabbinic literature, in a study of rabbinic literature, the rabbis during the
second temple period quoted the Old Testament in their writings and used that
in four different ways. We have studied this in the past and we see examples of
all four of these different ways in Matthew
You might want to go ahead and turn with me to Matthew 2. The claim is
often made that the New Testament authors interpret Old Testament texts
according to a rabbinical method known as midrash or perhaps even pesher will
get into the definitions of this here.
In Midrashic
methodology, as it is developed; let's just look at a couple of definitions and
then we will narrow this down: Midrash or Pesher is a principle in Rabbinic hermeneutics that often
seems to go against the plain literal meaning of the text, which seems to
contradict the historical/grammatical interpretation of a text. In midrash
you may look at how they have interpreted an Old Testament passage and you say,
well that doesn't seem like that goes along with the historical/grammatical
principle. But essentially in midrash they don't deny
the literal historical meaning. They are adding to it or applying it in another
sense. Rabbi Jacob Neusner defines midrash
by saying that it "corresponds to the English word 'exegesis.'"
Well we are all familiar with the word EXEGESIS. It means to
study and to draw out the meaning of a text. But there are many different ways
in which people apply the principle of EXEGESIS. If you believe
in a literal/grammatical-historical interpretation, then EXEGETICALLY you are going to
stay within the parameters of the text. If you don't believe in a
literal-historical-grammatical interpretation of Scripture, then what is going
to happen is that you are going to pretty much make it up as you go along; and
that is what happens. Those are the two different ends of the spectrum.
Pesher goes beyond midrash.
Pesher is
an interpretation or explanation of a verse of Scripture in which a given
statement is identified with an event or personality in the present time
without regard to its original literal-historical context. And so pesher goes
beyond the meaning of the Old Testament. Now liberals come along and some
covenant theologians come along and they will say that that is what is going on
in the New Testament. They are not really interpreting the Scripture literally
as they should. So to just to understand a few background points on
hermeneutics. Those who believe in a literal-historical interpretation of
Scripture, what we would call a traditional evangelical hermeneutic:
1. First of all that the use of the Old Testament by New Testament
writers is under divine inspiration. So when Peter quotes from Joel 2, he is
quoting that under the inspiration of God the Holy Spirit and so that shows
that it is an inerrant and infallible interpretation. So we believe that they
are not just making it up as they go along. They are under the authority of God
in the way they are quoting those passages.
2. Secondly they believe that the use of the Old Testament is
consistent with the single meaning of the text. Now that is a principle in
interpreting the Scripture. We believe that the writer of Scripture had only
one meaning. Just as you often see an analogy when you sit down to fill out
your income tax forms and you read the instructions. You try to ascertain the
single meaning of the author. Now sometimes that is difficult. Internal Revenue
Service agents don't even know what the meaning of the text is. But we believe
that the author has one intended meaning and God is the ultimate author of
Scripture. This is also a belief that is present in rabbinical theology as
well. So we believe that the use of New Testament writers of the Old Testament
is consistent with the single meaning of the text in the grammatical-historical
sense of the Old Testament passages.
3. Now in this discussion one of the best students and professors in
this area is a man who has been here and taught at one of our pastors'
conferences several years ago [2009], Dr. Robert Thomas. He would identify this
by the term "Inspired sensus plenior Application." Now that Latin word, sensus plenior, just
means a full sense. In academic language and the debate, what you see is that
on one side they think, well there is sort of a fuller sense to these Old Testament
passages and under inspiration the writers of the New Testament are really
pulling out something that otherwise you wouldn't see from the text. They just
ended it. They wouldn't use the word application. They just talk about this sensus plenior,
where Dr. Thomas has added to this. He says:
First of all, it is inspired. There may be a fuller sense to the
passage that God intended that is not apparent on the basis of a
literal-historical-grammatical interpretation, but sense the writers of the New
Testament are inspired they are applying; they are not denying the historicity
or the original meaning of the text in the Old Testament. They are just taking
that verse and they are applying it to a present sense situation, and so he
alls it ISPA (Inspired sensus plenior Application).
Now what I am going to develop here when I talk about the four views is three
of the views are basically what Bob Thomas identified as that Inspired sensus plenior
Application (ISPA). They just get a little more precise. Now what this means in terms of
our understanding of the Scripture is that every Old Testament passage must
receive its own grammatical-historical interpretation in context regardless of
how the New Testament uses it. So that means that if the New Testament quotes a
passage a certain way and applies it a certain way that isn't assigning a new
meaning to the Old Testament passage. We go back and read that passage in its
original context and that is the meaning that is intended by that passage. The
New Testament writer is going to apply it in perhaps a little different way but
under the inspiration of God the Holy Spirit.
The second thing we see from this is that the Old Testament passage
does not have multiple meanings by being read by the eyes of the New Testament.
That violates a key principle in interpretation, which is the single meaning of
every text. That is really important. Now right now I am just giving you these
principles. They seem a little abstract, but I'll refer to those as we look at
various examples in the Old Testament as we go along.
Third, the Old Testament passage must like every passage be limited to
a single grammatical-historical meaning. So, as a result Dr. Thomas says that
this produces two results: The first one is
that the New Testament writer abides by and applies the grammatical-historical
sense of the passage. That is what we will refer to as a literal prophesy with
a literal interpretation. That is his first category. Second, he says
that sometimes the New Testament writer goes beyond the grammatical-historical
meaning to assign a passage an additional meaning in connection with the New Testament
context. That is what he calls by this term I introduced called the Inspired sensus plenior Application.
4. Now just in terms of understanding the development of this, Arnold Fruchtenbaum and Michael Rydelnik
have demonstrated through their writings that there is a bit more to this,
thought generally they are in agreement. I want to establish that because they
use different terminology, but I want us to make sure that we understand that
they are really talking about the same thing. They just break it down a little
differently. Arnold Fruchtenbaum, as you know, was
born during the period of WWII in Siberia. His
parents met just after the German invasion of Poland. They escaped into Russia
and were arrested and sent as spies to Siberia. Arnold was born while they were
in Siberia. They moved back to Poland. While they were back at their village in
Poland there weren't very many Jews that were alive to return. Within a year
there was another pogrom. A pogrom was an attempt to destroy, an attack on the
Jews, to destroy the Jewish people. The Jews in this area, in these various
villages, got wind of this pogrom and escaped in the middle of the night and
walked out of Poland. They walked down through Czechoslovakia and across the
border into Austria.
So Arnold was about four years old at the time, or five; and then they
went into a displaced persons camp in Germany for a couple of years before
family members were able to bring them to the United States. He grew up in
Brooklyn. Not long before he bar mitzvahed he learned the Gospel of Jesus as the Messiah
and became a Christian. He was never bar mitzvahed. Not long after that his family moved to
southern California. After he graduated from high school he went to Cedarville
College at the time; now it is Cedarville University,
and then to Dallas Theological Seminary in Texas. I have always said the reason
Arnold's hard to understand is because he has a Polish-Yiddish-Russian-German-Brooklyn-Texas
accent and it is hard enough to understand us when we are just talking with a
Texas accent. So he is very helpful.
Michael Rydelnik, on the other hand, was born
of parents who were both holocaust survivors. His mother had become a Christian
during WWII, but kept it
secret and then made it known when he was a teenager. As a result of that his
father divorced his mother. Michael was very angry with her. He sought to
disprove her whole belief in Christianity, which ultimately led to him becoming
convinced of the truth of Christianity. And they are both well
tested scholars. Arnold Fruchtenbaum has been
here many times. He has his PhD from the University of New York. And Michael Rydelnik has his Masters of Theology from Dallas and his
doctorate, I believe, from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.
So anyway, they go back basing a lot of their work on some pioneering
work by the man by the name of David Cooper, dealing with various meanings of
Scripture dealing with four types of meanings that were identified by the
rabbis during this period of the second temple. Now after the destruction of
the temple in Jerusalem in AD 70, Midrashic
interpretation got really wild. It would focus on a word or the shape of a
letter or one little letter and then it would extrapolate from that, but it has
been demonstrated by a number of Jewish scholars that during the period of the
New Testament it was much more in line with what we would identify as a
literal-historical-grammatical interpretation. And they identified four
meanings of Scripture indicated by the word pardes. PRDS would be the four
consonants: 1. Pshat - P stands for Pshat, which
would indicate the simple or the literal meaning. 2. Remez - The
second word is the R for Remez,
which indicates that the passage has a suggestion or a hint of something more. 3. Drash
- And the third is called Drash. You can hear that same pronunciation, midrash, okay
that has a ma'amin or a m at the beginning, which turns it into a participle, drash, would be
an exposition or investigation, which drew conclusions that were applied to a
new situation. 4. Sod - And then the
fourth way of interpretation was called Sod,
which said there is a secret or a mystery and this was a very broad, general
category.
So with these four categories as a background we can see using examples
form Matthew 2 that this was how the New Testament writers interpreted and used
Old Testament Scripture. This is important to understand because what we see is
that the writers of Scripture from the apostle Paul to Peter to John were all
trained within the thinking of second temple period Judaism. They were
approaching the Text in this same way in which someone from their culture and
their background would approach the text. So this is important because when we
interpret the Scriptures when we are dealing with Paul's writing to the Romans
we need to investigate the background of Rome and understanding the Gentile background
there. When we are studying in Corinthians we need to understand the Gentile
background in Corinth and how that impacted the letter. When we are studying in
the Gospels we need to understand these things as well.
Now David L. Cooper, who did a tremendous amount of research on this
whole area earlier. He influenced Arnold; he influenced Michael Rydelnik. He flourished probably in the middle of the 20th
century.
1. Direct Fulfillment: He expanded these ideas just a little bit so
that pshat,
which referred to the simple meaning of the text; he redefined it or gave it a
new terminology, direct fulfillment.
Where you have a literal prediction in the Old Testament, a prophetic passage
that would have a literal direct fulfillment in the New Testament. That is also
Dr. Thomas' first category.
2. Typical Fulfillment: Then the second rabbinical category, which is
called remez,
he saw this as a typical fulfillment
(I will explain that terminology in a minute) where a literal-historical event,
not a prophesy but a literal-historical event, had certain typological
significance. It corresponded to some event in the New Testament and was
designed to represent that originally in the Old Testament context.
3. Applicational Fulfillment: Then there is
the third category, the drash; this was applicational
fulfillment where a historical event was used to draw out and application
with reference to either a future event or a present event sometime later.
4. Summary Fulfillment: Then the fourth category he called a summary fulfillment where no actual
event was prophesied in the Old Testament, but the fulfillment represents a
summation of Old Testament prophecies.
It is really helpful to understand these things so we will get into the
first one, which is pretty easy to understand.
1. Pshat
- This was called pshat
in the rabbinical view, where you have a literal prophesy in the Old Testament
with literal fulfillment.
This is seen in Matthew 2:5. The situation in Matthew 2 is that the
Magi have come to Bethlehem. They have seen the star indicating the birth of
the Messiah. They've seen the star while they were in the east and so they were
in Parthia. The Magi were a sect of
Parthian leaders who were responsible for appointing the king of Parthia.
The Parthians were feared by Herod
the Great because they had tried to conquer Judea when he was first
installed as the king and he had to flee for his life. He sent his family up to
Masada for protection and he fled to Cleopatra in Egypt and eventually he made
his way to Rome. Caesar Augustus gave him an army and sent him back to conquer
and throw out the Parthians. But all his life he is
paranoid about the Parthian; so one day there is a knock on his door and these
Parthian kingmakers show up on his front doorstep and they say we want to see
the king of the Jews. And they are not looking for Herod. So he is paranoid
about this.
So they have shown up and when they show up in Matthew 2:3, when Herod
heard about them he got all of his chief priests and scribes together,
according to Matthew 2:4, and he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be
born. And here is our verse: Matthew 2:5,
"And they said to him," so the "they" refers to the chief
priests and the scribes. They said to him, 'In Bethlehem of Judea, for this is
what was written by the prophet.' " [6], "And you, Bethlehem, land of
Judah, are by no means least among the leaders of Judah; for our of you shall
come forth a Ruler, Who will shepherd My people
Israel."
1. Literal Prophecy and Literal Fulfillment – Quote from Micah
5:2.
And so this verse identifies the birthplace of the Messiah. Now this
isn't a direct quote from the Masoretic Text; it is
influenced heavily by the Septuagint, but it comes from Micah 5:2. It is Micah
5:1 in the way the Hebrew Bible enumerates the verses; and this is taken from
the 1918 translation of the Tanach.
Micah 5:2 (5:1), "But thou, Beth-lehem Ephrathah, which art little to be among the thousands of
Judah, out of thee shall One come forth unto Me," this is God speaking,
"that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth are from of old."
Now the Hebrew indicates that His "goings forth" are from eternity,
"from ancient days."
Well the only one who can live for eternity is God. So this passage
indicates that the ruler who will come to Judah is not only going to be born in
Bethlehem, he's indicating humanity, but the fact that He is eternal, His
goings forth has been from ancient times; that He has been alive for eternity
indicates that He is more than human; He is also divine. So this is an example
of a literal prophecy because Micah
is writing this to foretell the birth of the Messiah and Matthew is quoting it
as a literal fulfillment that the
Messiah has been born, Jesus was born in Bethlehem.
Now another example of this initial category of a literal prophecy and
literal fulfillment is found in Matthew 1:23 where the angel Gabriel is quoting
now from the Old Testament in Matthew 1:23. Matthew is writing saying, Now all
this, that is the announcement of the angel of the Lord to Joseph, "Now
all this took place to fulfill what was spoken by the Lord through the
prophet." And there is the quote from: Matthew 1:23,
"'Behold, the virgin shall with child, and bear a Son, and they shall call
His name Immanuel,' which translated means, 'God with us.'"
So the lower verse indicates the quote from the Old Testament. It is
prophecy in Isaiah 7. The top verse is the Tanach translation of the Masoretic Text and it
differs a little bit from most English translations of the Old Testament and I
will point that out as we go through it. In the Tanach
it translates it: Isaiah 7:14, "Therefore the
Lord Himself shall give you a sign…"
Now if we look at that context back there in Isaiah; and I have gone
through this in a lot of detail in the past, but basically what is happening is
that God has promised Ahaz that he is going to have
victory; that the line of David is not going to be destroyed by this alliance
between the northern kingdom and Assyria; and a sign of His promise, that it is
going to be accurate, is that there will be this birth. Now He really gives two
signs, as we have pointed out; and it is very important to understand the
difference in the plural and singular pronouns in the Hebrew text here. But
there is one sign that is given individually to Ahaz
and another sign that is given to the house of David that the house of David
would not be destroyed. In Isaiah 7:13 Isaiah says, "Listen now, O house
of David." So he is addressing the house of David. "Is it too slight
a thing for you to try the patience of men, that you will try the patience of
my God as well?" Isaiah 7:14, "Therefore, the Lord Himself will give
you a sign…" This is directed to the house of David, not Ahaz personally. And the sign is going to be, as it is
translated in the New King James Version, "A virgin will be with
child."
Now the Jewish Tanach translates it "the
young woman," which is a literal translation. It is from the Hebrew hā·'al·māh, which can refer to a young woman, but it refers to a young woman, very
young, of marriageable age. In various passages it is clear that she is a
virgin and the rabbis who translated the Septuagint from Hebrew into Greek in
Alexandria Egypt roughly around 200-250 BC understood that hā·'al·māh referred
to a virgin because when the rabbis translated this, long before Jesus,
translated this into Greek, they translated it with the Greek word PARTHENOS,
which refers to a virgin. You have heard of the Parthenon in Athens. And so
this was clearly understood to refer to a virgin. And so he is told that
"she will conceive and bear a son and shall call
His name Immanuel."
Now we all know that it is not much of a sign if a young girl gets
pregnant. It happens every day; it happens all over the world that young girls
get pregnant without benefit of marriage. That is not very miraculous. So for
this to be a sign it has to be something that is miraculous. And it also has a
definite article there indicating "the virgin"; that this is a sign.
Something that was traditional within Jewish thought at the time going back to
Genesis 3:15 where God said, "The Seed of the woman" that is going to
be the One Who destroys "the seed of the serpent." So there is this
tradition related to this birth from a woman. And so here Isaiah indicated that
it is not just a woman, it is "the
woman," which connects it to a specifically understood woman, "the virgin," and that she will
conceive. That is what makes it a sign; that a virgin is going to conceive and
give birth to a son and the son is named Immanuel, which means "God with
us." It is an indication that there is a birth, humanity, but this one who
is born is called "God." He is given the attributes of God.
Isaiah 9:6 in the next chapter specifically identifies this one who is
born with titles of deity called "Mighty God"; and so that indicates
that the Messiah that is promised in these Old Testament prophecies was seen to
be both human and divine. Isaiah 11:1 is cited by Peter in Acts 13:22-23. In Acts 13:22 we read; Paul is speaking and he says, "And when He
had removed him, He raised up for them David as king, to whom also He gave
testimony and said, "I have found David the son of Jesse, a man after My own heart, who will do all My will.'" Acts 13:23
"From this man's seed," referring to David, "From this man's
seed, according to the promise, God raised up for Israel a Savior – Jesus
–." Well this is a
reference back to Isaiah 11:1 where there was a prophecy that at a future time
there would "come forth a Rod", this is a branch from the stem of
Jesse; Jesse being David's father. "And a Branch shall grow out of his
roots." The Davidic monarchy was seen to have
figuratively been chopped down by the destruction of the southern
kingdom in 586 BC. But this
passage is saying no, that there will come One out of that stump; there will
come a Branch out of that stump and that ancient promise to David that he would
have a descendent Who would rule eternally over Israel would be fulfilled.
Another passage that we see is Isaiah 28:16 combined with Psalm 118:22.
It is cited as literally being fulfilled in Matthew 21:42. Isaiah 40:3-5 there
is a prophecy that the Messiah, the Servant of God, would be preceded by
someone who announced Him: Isaiah 40:3
"The voice of one crying in the wilderness: 'Prepare the way of the LORD; Make straight
in the desert a highway for our God.' "
Luke and Matthew both quote this as fulfillment: Luke 3:4 quotes it, "as it is written in the book of the words of
Isaiah the prophet, saying: 'The voice of one crying
in the wilderness: "Prepare the way of the LORD; Make His paths straight." ' " And that is applied to
John the Baptist. Another quotation, Isaiah 50:6
refers to one who would betray Jesus and how He would be mistreated and beaten
and that is seen in fulfillment in Matthew 26:67 and in Matthew 27:26. He is
rejected and beaten.
That brings us to the second category and this is a fun one. I really
like this because it is complex and you really see how the Scriptures weave
some things together and bring it to fulfillment in the New Testament.
2. Remez
– Literal plus Typical example. A type is where some event or person or
thing in the Old Testament is a picture or corresponds to some eternal truth or
some event or person in the New Testament or even later on in the Old Testament.
The way we see this portrayed in Matthew 2 is that after the event where
Jesus and Mary and Joseph are visited by the Magi, the
Magi are warned by an angel to leave and not go back to Herod. An angel warns
Joseph that they need to leave because Herod is going to seek the life of the
Child and so they fled to Egypt. After Herod died the angel appeared to Joseph
again and told him to return to Israel.
Matthew 2:15 we read, "and was there until the death of Herod,
that what was spoken by the Lord by the prophet might be fulfilled saying, 'Out
of Egypt did I call My Son.' "
This is a quote form Hosea 11:1, which reads, "When Israel was a
youth I loved him," God is speaking, talking about the very beginning of
the Jewish nation, when God is calling them out of Egypt. So "when Israel
was a youth I loved him, and out of Egypt I called My
son."
Now is Hosea 11:1 a prophecy? Is that foretelling something in the
future? Not at all. It is just simply talking about a
historical event, God's redemption of the Jewish people from slavery in Egypt.
But Matthew takes it and says this is a fulfillment. This is what was fulfilled
from the prophet. See we use fulfillment usually only in the first sense, but
the Bible has many different ways in which it uses that word fulfillment. This
is where a historical event is seen to correspond to an event in the life of
Christ, but this isn't random. That is what is so neat about this. Matthew
isn't just sitting there going; well I've got to find a verse that sort of fits
this. Jesus is coming up from Egypt; there is this verse that sounds like that in
Hosea. I am going to pull them together. It is much more important than that.
Let's first understand typology. Typology
refers to a correspondence or similarity between an Old Testament person, such
as Moses, who was a prophet and he said that there would be a prophet greater
than he that would come. So Moses corresponds to the Greater Prophet, Who is
the Messiah. A thing would be like the altar where a sacrifice is brought. The
altar was wood, which is finite covered with gold, which is permanent that
would be a picture of the union of deity and humanity in the person of Christ;
or an event, such as, Passover; such as the sacrifice of a lamb at Passover, a
lamb that was without spot or blemish. In 1 Corinthians Paul said, "Jesus
is our Passover." When John the Baptist saw Jesus he
said, "Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world,"
John 1:29. The sacrificial lamb in the Old Testament was a picture that
corresponded to certain features about the sacrificial Messiah; that He would
be without spot or blemish or sinless. So this is what typology is. You have a person, thing, or event, which pictures a New
Testament person, doctrine or event, usually related to either the person or
the work of the Messiah.
We have a simple example of this. When Israel was going through the
wilderness and they were bitten by these various vipers and people were dying,
Moses was told to make a bronze serpent, put it on a pole, lift it up, and if
people just looked at the bronze serpent then they would be immediately healed,
Numbers 21:9. In John 3, when Jesus was talking to Nicodemus, He draws this
analogy with that event and He says: John 3:14,
"And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the
Son of Man," referring to Himself, "must the Son of Man be lifted
up." He is referring prophetically to the cross.
We have some interesting things that happen as the Israelites are going
through the wilderness and they are coming into the Promised Land. And as they
are going through these countries across the Jordan, you have Edom and Moab.
The king of Moab is extremely jealous of the Israelites and he calls upon this
sort of shady character to come and prophecy against Israel. And we believe
that there was this man Balaam, who was a prophet of God, but he had apostatized
and he has hired by the Moabites to come and curse Israel. God says, okay you
can go, but you can't say anything without My
permission and you can't curse Israel. And so there are actually four oracles
that Balaam announces against the Jews and in those oracles he never can curse
them, but he pronounces certain prophetic things in relation to Israel. Now I
want to look at one in the second vision and compare it to the third vision. In
the second oracle, in Numbers 23:22, I am sorry that it is a little small, but
I wanted to get both of these on the screen. God in his vision in:
Numbers 23:22 in his oracle he says, "God brings them out of
Egypt;" notice the plural. To whom does the "them" refer? That
refers to Israel. It says, "God brings them out of Egypt;" it is a
corporate sense there, the pronoun. "He has
strength like a wild ox." [23] "For there is no sorcery against
Jacob, nor any divination against Israel. It now must be said of Jacob and of
Israel, 'Oh, what God has done!' [24] "Look a
people rises like a lioness, and lifts itself up like a lion; it shall not lie
down until it devours the prey, and drinks the blood of the slain." So who is being talked about in Numbers 23? It is Israel as a corporate
group. It says certain things about them that we'll look at in just a minute.
In Numbers 24:7-9 you have the third oracle. Very similar things are
said in the third oracle. The third oracle is talking about an individual
thought. It is talking about a future king. It says: "He shall pour water
from his buckets, and his seed shall be in many waters. "His king shall be
higher than Agag, and his kingdom shall be exalted.'
So it is talking about this future king. "God brings him out of Egypt; He
has strength like a wild ox; He shall consume the nations, his enemies; He
shall break their bones and pierce them with his arrows. "He bows down; he
lies down as a lion; and as a lion, who shall rouse him?' 'Blessed is he who
blesses you, and cursed is he who curses you.' "
The key verse that also relates this background is that when Moses is
sent to Pharaoh, Moses raises the objection: Well, what should I say to
Pharaoh? And God tells him, "you shall say to Pharaoh, 'thus, says the
Lord: "Israel is My son, My firstborn." '
" Now what is important to this is that in this verse God is identifying
corporate Israel, all the Israelites, as an entity, as adopted by God as His
son. That is going to be important when we come to understanding Hosea 11:1
because Hosea 11:1 says, "Out of Egypt I called My
son." He is referring to the corporate entity of the Israelites. Now in
Numbers 23:21 we read, "He has not observed iniquity in Jacob, nor has He
seen wickedness in Israel. The LORD his God is with
him, and the shout of a King is among them."
What we see in this oracle in Numbers 23:21 that I want to point out
here is that it is using a singular pronoun, "his is God is with
him", but it is talking about the nation Israel. So it is talking about
the nation as a corporate entity using a third person singular pronoun to
describe him. The Biblica Hebraica Stuttgartensia is the Hebrew Bible uses a third person
singular pronoun there, him, to refer corporately to Israel.
That is important to understand because in Numbers 23:22 he shifts. In
Numbers 23:21 he is talking about Israel with a singular pronoun and in verse
22 he is talking about Israel with a plural pronoun. But he is still talking
about that corporate entity. "God brings them out of Egypt." So there
is a deliberate shift to this plural pronoun to make it clear to the reader
that he is talking about the people as a whole. Then he is going to return to a
singular pronoun after that, but he is still talking about all the people.
Notice he then goes on to read in Numbers 23:23 where it talks about
"there is no sorcery against Jacob, nor any divination against Israel. It
now must be said of Jacob and of Israel, 'Oh, what God has done!' But what is
important is what is in Numbers 23:24, he says, "Behold or Look, a
people" so he is till talking about Israel as a nation, "a people
rises like a lioness, and lifts herself up like a lion;" so the way we see
a description here is that Israel as a nation is described as being "like
a wild ox and like a lion." They have the power of the ox and the ferocity
of a lion. That is describing the nation.
This is where it gets really fun! In the next chapter (Numbers 24) in
the third oracle, the shift is from the nation to a king. It is no longer
talking about an individual. Numbers 24:7, "He shall pour water from his
buckets, and his seed shall be in many waters", indicating how Israel is
going to grow and expand. "His king," it is talking about an individual
now. It is not talking about Israel, but he has made a typology connection
here. Israel in Numbers 23 is a type or a picture of the king. So typology
isn't just an Old Testament passage picturing a New Testament event. You also
have Israel used in Numbers 23 as a type of the Messianic King in Numbers 24.
And he says, "His king shall be higher than Agag."
Now there is a textual variant there. In the Septuagint and in other ancient
translations and versions, including Qumran, it doesn't have Agag, which is the Amalekite
king. It has Gog, who is the traditional enemy of Israel mentioned in Ezekiel
38 and Ezekiel 39. Gog is the future enemy of Israel that will attack in the
later days that them Messiah will defeat and destroy. In Numbers 24:7, His
king, the Messiah, shall be higher than Gog, and his kingdom shall be exalted.
Numbers 24:8, "God brings him (that is, this king) out of Egypt; He has
strength like a wild ox; He shall consume the nations, his enemies, that is
Psalm 2, He shall break their bones and pierce them with his arrows. Numbers
24:9 He bows down like a lion.
So what we see in this chart is that in Numbers 23 Israel is said to be brought out of Egypt as a nation, and this is
a type or a picture of the fact that the King also will be brought out of
Egypt. It is said in Numbers 23 that God is for them. That Israel is a nation
like the horns of an ox. And in Numbers 24, God is for the King like the horns
of an ox. In Numbers 23 Israel is like a lion, but in Numbers 24 the King is
like a lion. So Numbers 24 is showing that the King is represented
typologically by the nation, but the King is going to be what? He is going to
be brought out of Egypt.
So when Hosea says, "And out of Egypt I called My
son" what is distinct or significant there is that Matthew, not following
the Septuagint, which says, "Out of Egypt I called My child." Most of
the time Matthew quotes from the Septuagint, but here he quotes from the Masoretic Text because the Masoretic
Text is talking about, uses the term, "My son" that is a direct
correlation to the King passage in Numbers 24 that the messianic King is going
to be brought out of Egypt. So he is not just a randomly picking Hosea 11
because it is talking about somebody coming out of Egypt. He is picking
Hosea 11 because Hosea 11, when he says, "out of Egypt I called My
son" Hosea 11:1, is alluding to the fact that in Numbers 24 in the third
Balaam oracle, Balaam says, "the King will come out of Egypt." And so
that is connected also to the fact that Israel is My
son. Israel as God's son is a type of the Messiah. So Matthew isn't just
randomly pulling this verse out of the Scripture and applying it to Jesus.
There is a specific correlation between all of these passages.
Now that just looks at the first two ways in which the writers of the New
Testament are quoting from the Old Testament. Next time we will look at the
third and the fourth one. With our heads bowed and our eyes closed. Father, thank You for this opportunity to study these things.
To be reminded that Your Scripture is very simple in places, but in other times
to really into the meaning and to see what is going on; it takes a lot of
thought and a lot of study. And we are thankful that as we read in the Hebrew
Scriptures we see all of these literal prophecies that are fulfilled, but we
also see patterns. We see these types again and again that depict certain
things about the person of Jesus and the work of Jesus and that gives us
confidence to believe that Jesus is the promised and prophesized Messiah of
Israel, who came to save His people from their sins and that we might have
salvation from our sin by simply trust in Him and believing that He is the one
Who died on the cross for our sins just as the lamb was sacrificed for the sins
of Israel on Yom Kippur. So Father, we pray that you
would challenge us with what we have studied tonight. We pray this in Christ's
Name, Amen.