Old Testament Quotes in the New Testament

"Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will direct your paths," Proverbs 3:5-6. "They that wait on the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles, they shall run and not grow weary, they shall walk and not faint," Isaiah 40:31. "Fear thou not, for I am with thee; be not dismayed, for I am thy God; I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness," Isaiah 41:10. "Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, shall defend your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus," Philippians 4:6-7. "Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee because he trusteth in thee," Isaiah 26:3. "For the grass withers, the flower fades, But the word of our God stands forever," Hebrews 4:12.

Before we get started we will have a few moments of silent prayer to give each one the opportunity to make sure you are in fellowship and ready to study the Word this evening and then I will open in prayer. Let's pray.

Father, again we're so thankful we can be here to study Your Word, to have our confidence in Your Word reinforced; to understand Your plan for the ages; to be reminded of Your grace that runs through every dispensation; and that we like all human beings are desperately in need of Your grace, Your provision and You are the One who sustains us; You are the One who has given us a perfect salvation; and Father, we pray that we might come to understand the dynamics of that even more fully tonight as we study. Father, we pray for those in this congregation who are facing challenges; there are some who are facing some serious tests related to health, their finances, others related to loss, and Father we just pray that You would comfort them and strengthen them during this time. We pray this in Christ's Name, Amen.

Open your Bibles to Matthew 2 and we are going to stay there as sort of our anchor chapter as we go through this important issue of understanding this question of how the Old Testament is quoted in the New Testament. That may seem like a rather abstract concept for some of you. I remember the first time I think I ever heard anybody talk about it, address it in any way shape or form was when I was in seminary. It sort of flew past my head in terms of its significance because it is a subtle issue; but it is one that has tremendous ramifications. Now what we are doing, just to put this within the scope of this series on God's plan for the ages; we have covered the Old Testament ages, the age of the Gentiles, the age of Israel. We have covered the dispensations that are within each of those ages; and we have come up through the dispensation of the Messiah, the life of Christ ending at the cross. Now there is a short transition period before the next dispensation begins, which is the current dispensation, the church age.

The church age begins in Acts 2, and in Acts 2 the phenomena of God the Holy Spirit descending upon the church takes place and the disciples begin to speak in languages that they never learned. Their physical manifestation of what appears to be flames of fire over each of their heads; and they begin to speak to each of those who are in the temple about the mighty works of God. Because they are Galileans they are assumed to be ignorant, from the back woods, something like we might ascribe to someone from Pasadena or East Texas or Arkansas, every place has some place like that, West Virginia. When I was in Connecticut I heard somebody say that when you cross the boarder into Maine your IQ dropped 50 points. Now these things are not true, but they are just these kinds of regional myths that people believe and they had them in New Testament times as well. They just figured that if you were from Galilee, because you had sort of a backwoods accent apparently, or whatever it was, you weren't very bright. So how could these unlearned Galileans, thee fishermen speak so well, so accurately in languages that they had never heard?

So they asked the question, Peter answers, and his answer really opens up this whole issue. Because when Peter answers in Acts 2:16 he says, "But this is what was spoken of through the prophet Joel." So at a surface reading of the text, it sees as if what Peter is saying is that this is the fulfillment of what Joel says, and He quotes from Joel 2:28-32, which is a prophecy related to "the great and awesome day of the Lord," which comes at the end of the Tribulation. And he talks about these things that will come about as a result of God pouring forth His Spirit upon Israel. And we understand from what we studied in the New covenant that that is part of the fulfillment and the true inauguration of the New covenant.

What actually happens in Acts 2 is not mentioned at all in Joel 2. What does happen in Acts 2 is the speaking in tongues. This is nowhere mentioned in Joel 2. What is predicted actually literally in Joel 2 doesn't talk place at all in Acts 2. So in what sense is this a fulfillment? Now the reason this is important is because within evangelicalism there are these different views on how you understand this fulfillment type of terminology when the New Testament quotes from the Old Testament. And if you treat them all the same then you end up with some pretty squirrely ideas and theology. And there are those who will take this as a partial fulfillment. So this is one issue that comes up in hermeneutics: is there such a thing as partial fulfillment? Or is a partial fulfillment actually no fulfillment because fulfillment means "fulfilled" completely. And that is where I would end up. This isn't a partial fulfillment; there are no partial fulfillments because it is not a fulfillment at all. Nothing that happens in Joel 2 happens in Acts 2. So how could it be partial fulfillment?

There is only one thing that the two events have in common and that is the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. But I would argue that it is a different kind of outpouring on the day of Pentecost than what will come with the New covenant. This is why this is important. It also will help lay the foundation for something we will study a little later on when we talk about this recent development within dispensational thought that has been called "progressive dispensationalism." And in progressive dispensationalism they've adopted a new system of interpretation, a new hermeneutic, which they call a complementary hermeneutic. Now we believe that the way to understand the Bible is on the basis of a literal-historical-grammatical interpretation of the Scripture. Literal: we take the word used in the normal everyday sense. It does not mean that we deny figures of speech or idioms, but in terms of the every day meaning and use of language we take it at face value. It is grammatical. We believe it is important to exegete the passages, understand the grammar and the syntax, because that opens up to us the meaning of what is said in these particular statements. It is historical because it has a historical background and we believe there's a context, a historical cultural context, to all of the passages in the Bible and we must understand that. We must understand the background of Greek culture when we are talking about the epistles to Ephesus or Corinth or Thessalonica. We need to understand that. We need to understand aspects of Persian culture when we are studying Nehemiah or studying Esther or studying Daniel. We need to understand ancient Near Eastern culture when we are reading through the Pentateuch and other things. So that is the historical-grammatical-literal interpretation of Scripture.

But in complementary hermeneutics they add a fourth category, theological. It is historical-grammatical-literal-theological. What that means is that later theology then assigns new meanings to Old Testament texts. Now this is where this gets a little bit abstract and it takes all of us, myself included, a little while to grasp this. Now when David or Samuel or Isaiah wrote in the Old Testament there was a single meaning assigned to that text. He meant one and only one thing. You know that intuitively. Whenever you read something that you don't quite understand you are asking, what did they mean by that? You understand that the meaning is determined by the author's intent, what was in the author's mind, not what you want it to say, and that they had one thing in mind that they were communicating. This concept of this single meaning of the text is very important.

What happens in some of these other theological systems is they start talking about double references; that there are double fulfillments. Arnold Fruchtenbaum uses the term dual fulfillment where he talks about Isaiah 7:14, and that is because two or three of those verses are prophecies related to Ahab personally. But in the passage in Isaiah 14 there is a shift in the plural pronoun, and it is addressed to the house of David. It is a prophecy that has a long-term target, which is the birth of Christ. So he uses that term dual fulfillment. What he means by that is that there are really two prophecies there. One is fulfilled early; one is fulfilled later. But in this language that has been developed recently in hermeneutics you have this term dual fulfillment; and what that means is that it is partially fulfilled at the time of Isaiah, for example, that Isaiah's son partially fulfills that prophecy, but its ultimate fulfillment is the birth of Christ.

This has a lot of implications for the whole study of meaning and assigning meaning to the text where this really impacts most of us. It is a form of the augment that the text has a living aspect to it. You hear it when you hear people talk about the Constitution as a living document. The interpretation of it can change from generation to generation. And so this is a dimension of that kind of a problem applied to the Bible. So this is why I am taking some time to drill down on this more than I ever have before because it needs to be clearly articulated and understood within the context of why it is important to dispensational studies and why it shows, and we will get there eventually, why progressive dispensationalism isn't progressive, isn't dispensational. In fact, one theologian, Walter Elwell, commented in an article he wrote in Christianity Today that it is more in common with covenant theology than it does with dispensationalism. That is a rough paraphrase of his comment.

I talked about it a little bit last time and I said that there are four basic ways in which this is used. This is based on a rabbinical concept that rabbinical interpretation that was called PRDS, which is a P.R.D.S. Hebrew is a consonant language, so they stood for four different Hebrew letters each related to these different styles of interpretation.

1. The first was Pshat for direct fulfillment. This is the one we are most use to. When you see the Scripture say "this fulfilled that" you think in terms of this category only--probably most of you, unless you've been really paying attention to me over the years. But there are three other ways that terminology is used. There are examples of each of these in Matthew. Dr. David L. Cooper, who was the founder of the Biblical Research Society and had a strong background in Jewish studies, broke down the PRDS system and he gave new names. The Pshat, the simple meaning of the text he called direct fulfillment.

2. The second letter, the Resh refers to Remez, which means a hint. He called that typical fulfillment. We got into that last time.

3. The third category is applicational fulfillment. This is the Dalet in PRDS—the Dalet for Drash, meaning an exposition or application. The Drash is like the last part of Midrash.

4. And then you have summary fulfillment (Sod).

We will hopefully move through the third and fourth tonight, but I want to review last time. I got a couple of really good responses last time. People came up and said boy, my brain is turned inside out. So that tells me that you need to hear it again just to understand it. I've taught this to everybody here with maybe two or three exceptions at least three times. So repetition is good for you to understand it and get this down because when you read your Bible you need to look. You see these quotes from the Old Testament you need to be saying, well what does he mean and which of these four categories is being used? The first time I ran into this was back in the 80s. The first time I was introduced to Arnold Fruchtenbaum. Tommy Ice and I were working through something related to Old Testament and an Old Testament passage. I personally think it was related to Joel 2 and dispensationalism and we were working through this at that particular time.

As I pointed out last time, the first category is literal prophecy, literal fulfillment. In Matthew 2:5-6 the scribes and Pharisees are asked by Herod where the Messiah was supposed to be born? And they quoted from Micah 5:2 that it would be in Bethlehem. So Micah 5:2 is a prophecy, a literal prophecy speaking about a future event that Bethlehem would be the place where "One will go forth from Me to be ruler in Israel." So it is focusing on this future king, the ruler in Israel. "His goings forth are from are from long ago from the days of eternity." So it is a literal prophecy being literally fulfilled at the birth of Christ. Another example I mentioned a minute ago, Isaiah 7:14, "Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: the virgin will conceive and bear a son, and she shall call His name Immanuel". This is quoted in Matthew 1:23 as fulfillment.

Now one thing you might not have known is that last week we had an Orthodox Jew in the congregation. And he is very, very acknowledgeable and very much aware of issues. And he has been witnessed to a lot by a number of Christians. And so there was an added dimension. He has been at this church once before back in November. It just so happened that I had just started Matthew and we were in Matthew 2. You think that is a coincidence? He was brought here by a friend of his and sat in class with his friend's New King James Bible in one hand—he thought that was a better translation than his English translation of the Tanahk—and his Hebrew text on the other hand. All I saw that whole Sunday morning was the top of his head because he was going back and forth, and he had some good questions for me afterwards. So I believe with people like that God is certainly working on them.

We have got some really sharp people here in this congregation. We have got some who are listening online and I got a really good question from one lady up in New York. And I put it on the screen because I want to show the answer and I want to talk about this a little bit to help you understand why this is important. It is not just doing this for some sort of academic reason; it really impacts how we understand Scripture. This is a little bit above some of y'alls' heads. I understand that. It is a little bit above my head. I have had to go through this many times. The first time I heard some of what I am getting ready to tell you, which was only about 13-14 years ago, I had to go back again and again and again and read it to really get my fingers around it, but I am hoping I can explain it a little more significantly tonight. So here is her question. She said: "Perhaps you can clarify for me the use of a single hermeneutic". What she is saying is that last time I taught about the single meaning of the text. So to clarify that let's look at a few examples from the Psalms comparing the original context to how the New Testament writer uses it.

She asks in relation to three texts. She asked about Psalm 40:7, which says, "Behold, I come; in the scroll of the book it is written of me…." That is quoted in Hebrews 1. Is this David talking about himself here and then the writer of Hebrews ascribes it to Jesus? And then she asks about Psalm 41:9, "even my own familiar friend in whom I trust, who ate my bread, has lifted up his heel against me." A prophesy related to Judas Iscariot's betrayal of Jesus. Then she commented "we all know that hardly a Davidic Psalm was written without reference to one enemy or another" (Under the principle of a single hermeneutic, or a single-meaning of the text, is what she is asking) does this mean that in real time for David this was one of his foes, but then Peter picks it up to refer to the Lord's enemy in Acts 1? Actually, the Acts 1 quote, when Peter is calling everybody together, we need to replace Judas, he quotes from Psalms 69:25 and Psalm 109:8. And that is really the third category.

I went through this in Acts 1. I went through all four of these uses in Acts 1 because there were many times in the book of Acts that we had these quotes from the Old Testament and had to decide which category they were in. So that would be the third category application in which we will get to tonight. In fact probably each of these is application as opposed to direct prophecy. Now sometimes the borderline gets a little iffy because I know some people—for example, you have Arnold Fruchtenbaum. Arnold Fruchtenbaum says Psalm 22 is a prophecy. Michael Rydelnik, who has taken everything Arnold has done and developed it much more academically and much more precisely says, no, it is not; it is application. So there is a little bit of a disagreement there because some of these are a little harder to define. I am using Psalm 22 because I want to educate you on this issue. At least you have heard it and this will help you in terms of some references later on.

Now there is a disagreement. To me the three most widely known and read writers from our dispensational camp on hermeneutics are first and foremost the man who I think has it nailed better than anybody else is Dr. Robert Thomas. Now he is retired from teaching at the Master's Seminary, and Michael Cha, Mike and Youngeun have been a part of the congregation now for a couple of months. Mike did his Masters of Theology out there at the Master's Seminary and was privileged to take a lot of courses from Bob Thomas. In a lot of those courses there were not many other students or he was the only one. He really got a great opportunity to pick his brain. So there is Bob Thomas and then there is two guys from Dallas, Elliott Johnson, who was here and spoke at the Chafer Conference this last March; and Elliott has taught the Basic Hermeneutics class at Dallas Seminary and the Advanced Hermeneutics course for the last 40 plus years at Dallas Seminary. He is highly respected. He has written a textbook on hermeneutics. Then Roy Zuck, who went to be with the Lord a little over a year ago. Roy Zuck is well known because he edited anything that was published at Dallas Seminary. Roy wrote a book called Basic Bible Interpretation, which I recommend to those, and some of you are here who came to the Bible Studies Methods Class, and that is an excellent, excellent resource. But they don't agree.

What I am going to show you and I put up on the screen is this screen is this quote from Bob Thomas' book where Dr. Thomas is critiquing the other two guys from Dallas. I think Thomas is right. Thomas is really firm. He is so consistent on emphasizing the principle of the single meaning of the text. That means that when David wrote Psalm 22 he was writing about something in his own experience and was not conscious of writing something, he was not writing prophecy, but he is writing using a lot of hyperbole and idiomatic language that under the ministry of God the Holy Spirit was guided so that there was a fuller sense. That is that word I used last time, sensus plenior, a fuller sense that under inspiration of the Holy Spirit. When the writers of the New Testament came along they quoted from that. But the meaning of the text, if you were sitting down in 900 BC, and you were teaching Psalm 22, you wouldn't talk about the Messiah at all because that is not evident from reading the text. It had one meaning. The meaning the author intended. God the Holy Spirit comes along under inspiration and applies that to Jesus. That is what we mean by application. This is what Bob Thomas says critiquing Roy Zuck:

"Zuck chooses the principle of single meaning, [so all three of these guys argue for single meaning, but they had some differences] but treads on dangerous ground when, in following Elliott Johnson, he adds related implications or 'related submeanings.' To speak of a single meaning on one had and of related submeanings on the other is contradictory. A passage either has one meaning or it has more than one. No middle ground exists between those two options."

This is Bob Thomas in an article he wrote that became part of his book on Evangelical Hermeneutics. He says:

Zuck uses Psalm 78:2 to illustrate related implications or related submeanings. The psalmist Asaph writes, "I will open my mouth in a parable.' Zuck limits the passage to one meaning, but says the passage has two referents, Asaph and Jesus, who applies the words to Himself in Matthew 13:35. Instead of saying the psalm has two referents, which in essence assigns two meanings to it, [see that violates the single meaning of the text as soon as you say it has two referents. As soon as you say that Psalm 22 applied to David and to Jesus you have given it two meanings. That violates the single meaning principle of hermeneutics.] Instead of saying the psalm has two referents, which in essence assigns two meanings to it, to say that the psalm's lone referent is Asaph, thereby limiting the psalm to one meaning, is preferable. Either Psalm 78:2 refers to Asaph or it refers to Jesus. It cannot refer to both. It is proper to say that Psalm 78:2 refers to Asaph, and Matthew 13:35 refers to Jesus. By itself, Psalm 78:2 cannot carry the weight of the latter referent."

In other words, what he is saying is, Jesus is applying it to Himself. But Asaph wasn't talking about Jesus in the original context.

"In defending his double-referent view, [this is Bob Thomas still] Zuck apparently makes this same distinction, though he does not repudiate the double-referent terminology. [This is where it seems like well these guys are just arguing semantics. It has taken a long time for me to sit down with Roy, with Elliott, and with Bob Thomas over a period of several years to really understand what they are saying. He goes on to say,] Zuck discusses Psalms 8, 16, and 22, noting that David wrote them about his own experiences [so all three of these guys are going to say this same thing: Psalm 22 David wrote about David's experiences. They are then applied by the Holy Spirit to Jesus], noting that David wrote them about his own experiences, but that the New Testament applies them to Christ in a sense significantly different from how David used them. His conclusions about these psalms and the New T use of them is accurate, but the psalms themselves cannot have more than one referent, hermeneutically speaking. Such would estament assign them more than one meaning. [Now let me tell you, when you start saying that it is a double referent or a double meaning you may not understand it. It may go over your head right now, but that opens the door to the road to perdition in terms of understanding what the Bible is saying. It has horrible implications, one of which is this nonsense in my opinion called progressive dispensationalism. Then Thomas goes on to say,] Neither the human author David, nor the original readers of the psalms, could have used the principles of grammar and the facts of history to come up with the additional referent or meaning that the New Testament assigns to the psalms. The source and authority for that additional meaning is the New Testament, not the Old Testament." [In those examples where it is application, not in the first example, which are clear messianic prophecies. Thomas isn't denying the reality of messianic prophecies. That is a whole other issue.]

I want to review this to make sure we get this. I talked about the second example, which is literal plus typical. This is the view that the rabbi's called Remez, which means "hint" and so this opens up particular meaning. Matthew 2:15, where we see that Jesus was in a family in Egypt "until the death of Herod; that what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet might be fulfilled." Now this is a different sense of fulfillment. Fulfillment, that word has a broad range of meanings; and if we assign the same sense every time we see it we are going to get into trouble. That "through the prophet might be fulfilled, saying, 'Out of Egypt did I call My Son.' "

Quoting Hosea 11:1, God says, "When Israel was a youth I loved him, and out of Egypt I called My son." Now this is a reference back to Exodus 4 when God adopts Israel as His son. That is important terminology because it begins to set the stage that Israel is going to be defined by God as a type or a picture of the Messiah. That is what Matthew is doing. When Matthew quotes Hosea 11:1, some people say well he just picked that because that is a passage that talks about Israel coming out of Egypt and he could relate that to Jesus. No, he is not writing about geography in Matthew 2:15. He is really emphasizing the significance of Jesus as the Messiah and that that quote has messianic implications in terms of that phrase "coming out of Egypt." It is not something that is just random. It is something that God the Holy Spirit built into the meaning of that text through inspiration through Hosea. It is not something that was intended as a prophecy. Because when you look at Hosea 11:1 Hosea is simply writing about the historical event of the Jews coming out of Egypt and Israel was called by God "my son."

Now the Septuagint translated that "my children" and Matthew doesn't quote from the Septuagint. These other references he quotes from the Septuagint because they were still true, but he doesn't quote from the Septuagint here. He quotes from the Masoretic text because what he wants to emphasize is the phrase "my son". That is theologically significant because Jesus is God's Son. So what I did next was go to a passage of Scripture that we really don't spend a lot of time on, which is the Balaam oracles in Numbers 22-24. Balaam was this prophet who gets hired. He is truly a prophet of God, but he is sort of prostituting his gift to the highest bidder. God forbids him from cursing Israel but Balak the king of the Moabites wants him to curse Israel so that they are not a problem. God instead gives him these oracles where he is going to predict certain things related to Israel.

I read those and I put this slide on the board, which sort of runs together and I redid the slide so that you would see the two columns here. On the left you have the second oracle; on the right you have the third oracle. I color-coded it. On the left side the oracle is talking about Israel as a nation and the pronouns that are used are pronouns that relate to the corporate entity of the whole nation. (Isaiah 23:21) God brings them out of Egypt. That first person plural pronoun is replaced by a second person singular pronoun but it is clear that it is always referring to that corporate entity of Israel. The right hand column, the third oracle that is related to the messianic King. It talks about "His king shall be higher than Gog, his kingdom shall be exalted." It talks about the fact that He destroys His nations and enemies, and all of this is related to an individual. So the left side talks about Israel; the right side talks about the Messiah King.

Now why is this important? Because what God did in the revelation of this information to Moses is that God defined Israel as a type of the Messiah. That isn't something that a theologian or Bible scholar came along and did. That is what God did. God uses Israel in Numbers 23 as a type or a picture or an analogy for the Messiah the individual, the messianic King in the third oracle, and the color code brings it out. He says, "God brought them out of Egypt;" when talking about Israel, but when talking about the King he says, "God brings Him out of Egypt." That is really our key phrase. That is what Matthew is going back to; is that there is this messianic prophecy that the Messiah King is going to come out of Egypt; not just the typology of Israel coming out, but that God specifically predicted that the Messiah King Himself would come out and this would be typified by Israel coming out. He says the nation is compared to the strength of a wild ox and this is a type of the King who has the strength like a wild ox. The nation is said to rise like a lioness and be compared to a lion. That is a type of the Messiah King Who bows down as a lion.

And so this is not just happenstance. This ought to increase our confidence in the whole concept of inspiration. That this isn't just something that these guys made up and wrote down, but there is a lot of intricate and subtle connections from the Hebrew text from these various passages that were revealed over a period of time in the Old Testament that are then brought together in the Person of Christ over a period of 2,000 years. At the conclusion of Numbers 23:21 it says that "The LORD his God is with him, and the shout of the King is among, it says them in the King James and most English translations, but the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia Hebrew Bible has the third person singular "with him", which is important because it uses that second person singular pronoun to emphasize the whole of Israel. That also played a role.

I am writing a paper right now on Romans 10:9-10 that is going to come out in a book on difficult passages for Free Grace Gospel, and that really plays an important role. God deals with Israel corporately. We covered that when I covered Romans 9, 10, and 11. And God deals with them that way. We always want to think in terms of individuals, but that is not how God deals with it. So that is the point of that section.

In this next section I am going to look at another example of this same type of usage. It is the typical use of the passage. The original context isn't talking about something prophetic. It is not a prophecy in the original context but it is used by the writer in the New Testament in order to emphasize something that is depicted from this Old Testament event in the life of the Messiah. So in Matthew 15:7-9 we read, "Hypocrites!" Jesus is speaking. "Well did Isaiah prophesy about you saying: "These people draw near to Me with their mouth, and honor Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me." See that is a quote from Isaiah 29:13, which I have at the bottom of the slide, in the original context. In the original context of Isaiah 29:13 Isaiah is speaking of a historical event when the people of Israel at the time of Isaiah were rejecting his message and his warning that they would come under divine judgment for their disobedience. Israel's rejection of the prophetic word of the prophet at that time is a type or an analogy of Israel's rejection of the prophetic word of the Messiah. So it is a type. Israel as a whole, in terms of their negative volition becomes a type of Israel at the time of Christ and that negative volition.

Another example, see not all of these have to be as intricate as the first one. In John 12:39-40 we read, "Therefore they could not believe, because Isaiah said again: 'He has blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts, lest they should see with their eyes, lest they should understand with their hearts and turn, so that I should heal them'." This is a quote from Isaiah 6:10, "Make the heart of this people dull, and their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and return and be healed." God has given them plenty of time to exercise their volition. They have exercised it negatively and now He is shutting it down and hardening their heart because they have rejected Him. That is the theological nuance there. In Isaiah 6:10 the context talking about a prophetic message of Isaiah the prophet that his message would be rejected by his own people and that is the historical situation. It is not making prophecy in Isaiah 6:10, but it is a type or an analog of the situation with Israel at the time of Christ.

Another quick example Matthew 21:42, "Jesus said to them, 'Have you never read the Scriptures: "The stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone. This was the LORD'S doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes."?'" That is taken from Psalm 118:22-23, which states, "The stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone. This is the LORD'S doing; it is marvelous in our eyes." Now the Psalm 118:22-23 passage is simply making a point from an analogy that the builders rejected or set aside a stone because they did not know what to do with it. Later, when they finished the building they realized that it was the chief cornerstone, the head of the corner. That is the literal meaning for Psalm 118:22. It is not a prophecy. But the Messiah comes along and says that this is a picture, this is a type of what Israel has done; they have rejected the chief cornerstone. So these are some passages.

One more, a simple one, John 19:36, when Jesus was crucified, when they prepared to prepared to break His bones, break His legs so that He would die quickly, they discovered that He was already dead so they didn't do it. This was done so that Scripture would be fulfilled, "not one of His bones shall be broken." And this is a type, a fulfillment of the typology of the Old Testament, Numbers 9:12, "They shall leave none of it until morning." That is the Passover lamb, "nor break one of its bones. According to all the ordinances of the Passover they shall keep it." And so the fact that they didn't break the bones of the Passover Lamb is a type that is fulfilled in Christ. None of His bones were broken.

That brings us to the third category. This is literal plus application. Sometimes it is hard to discern when is it typology and when is it application? A typology is when there is a person, event or a thing that is used by the Scripture to depict a principle or teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ usually or some doctrinal point. In application it is not just taking something that happened in the Old Testament and it is applying it. There is usually only one point of comparison between the Old Testament circumstance and situation and the New Testament situation. We read in Matthew 2:17-18, Matthew writes, "Then that which was spoken through Jeremiah the prophet was fulfilled, saying, 'A voice was heard in Raman, weeping and great morning, Rachel weeping for her children; and she refused to be comforted, because they were no more.'"

Now the circumstance in the quote, which is in Jeremiah 31:15, "Thus says the LORD, 'A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping. Rachel is weeping for her children; she refuses to be comforted for her children, because they are no more.'" So this is describing a historical situation. Rachel is used here; Rachel is the wife of Jacob, the mother of Joseph. Rachel is buried in Ramah. Ramah is a small village like Bethlehem located to the north of Jerusalem, located on this map identified as Jebus. This is really a map from the period before Jebus was taken by David. But it gives you an idea of their physical location. Now today there is a site in Bethlehem called the tomb of Rachel, but that is not the tomb of Rachel. Rachel is actually buried in Ramah, which is north of Jerusalem. Now the circumstance and the context of Jeremiah 31:15 is that when the Babylonians came in and defeated the Jews and destroyed the temple and destroyed Jerusalem in 586 BC, Nebuchadnezzar took a host of captives, young men who were chained together and were taken out of Israel. They were taken from Jerusalem and the route that was taken went north through Ramah. So they marched down the road in front of the tomb of Rachel. Rachel is depicted or personified as the whole of the mothers of Israel. And so Jeremiah is saying Rachel (all of Israel's mothers) are weeping for her children because she will not see them anymore. They are taken from her and "she refuses to be comforted for her children, because they are no more."

Now Matthew applies that to his situation. Now there are several differences in this passage. First of all Matthew is applying it to Herod's slaughter of the infants in Bethlehem. Bethlehem is south of Jerusalem. Ramah is north of Jerusalem. The mothers of Israel were weeping over the loss of their sons who weren't dead. They were being taken off into captivity. The mothers in Matthew 2 are weeping because they have lost their infant sons. So there are many differences between the two circumstances but there is one area of similarity, and that one area of similarity is the grief and the weeping of the mothers over the loss of their sons. And so this is taken and applied to the situation at the time of Christ, to when the infants were killed Rachel, the mothers in Israel, were weeping for her children. So it is just one point of commonality between the two circumstances. That is what we have in Joel 2. In Joel 2 remember what I said in the introduction? In Joel 2 and the quote in Joel 2 and Acts 2. Nothing that is predicted in Joel 2 happened in Acts 2. The one thing that did happen in Acts 2, speaking in tongues, is not predicted in Joel 2. The only point of commonality between the two is the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. And that is what Peter is talking about. He is saying, see this, this is the same "kind of" thing that we can expect when the Holy Spirit is poured out when the New covenant is inaugurated. He is only making a point of comparison there. He is not saying this is the fulfillment of that prophecy like the first category of Micah 5:2 quoted in Matthew 2. That is important to understand. That is what we mean by application. So even though the text says "fulfill", don't read into it your preconceived notions that "fulfill" always means the same thing.

Another example of this is in Matthew 8:17 quoting from Isaiah 53:4. Now Isaiah 53 is predictive prophesy of the Messiah. The whole chapter is a Messianic prediction, but Isaiah 53:4 is not talking about what is happening in Matthew 8:17. Matthew 8 describes these miracles that Jesus performs. He is healing the sick, He is restoring sight to the blind, and He is casting out demons. All of these things are taking place to indicate signs of His Messiahship. So in Matthew 8:17 Matthew quotes Isaiah. He did these things, He did all these healings, "that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet, saying: 'He Himself took our infirmities and bore our sicknesses.'" But if you look at the context of Isaiah 53:4, which reads, "Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted." The context of Isaiah 53:4 is that is describing Jesus' substitutionary payment for our sins on the cross. It is not talking about Him healing people. So there is nothing that those two passages really have in common except this one area where Jesus is healing; and that is the area that Matthew is quoting and why Matthew quotes from it.

Another example of this type of usage is Matthew 13:14-15 similar to Isaiah 6:10 I used earlier. This is a quote from Isaiah and Matthew says, "And in them the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled." It is talking about Jesus is now teaching in parables and He has just condemned the Jews because they have rejected Him in Matthew 12 and so Matthew says, this fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah, which said, "Hearing you will hear and shall not understand, and seeing you will see and not perceive; for the hearts of this people have grown dull. Their ears are hard of hearing, and their eyes have closed, lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears, lest they should understand with their hearts and turn, so that I should heal them." And then there is the quote from Isaiah 6:9-10. Now Isaiah 6:9-10 describes the nature of Isaiah's ministry and now Matthew is just applying that to Jesus' ministry in Matthew 13:14-15.

Now the last one, which is the one I think is the most fun to work with is what is called summary or summation. This is called Sod by the rabbis. Matthew 2:23 we read, "and (Jesus) came and resided in a city called Nazareth, that what was spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled, 'He shall be called a Nazarene.'" Notice, it still uses that same "fulfillment" terminology. Now the question that we ask is where in the world is there such a prophecy in the Old Testament? If you are looking at your Bible and you look at Matthew 2:23 and if you have a study Bible, you will look in the margin where you have your cross references [and I am using a Ryrie Study Bible, which Ryrie didn't do the cross references, that is a part of the New American Standard (NASB), this is the NASB 95 Edition] and you will see Luke 1:26; Luke 2:39; John 1:45-46; Mark 1:24; John 18:5,7; John 19:19. But golly, you didn't see a single Old Testament verse listed there, did you? That is because there is no place in the Old Testament that says Jesus is going to be called a Nazarene.

Well wait a minute, now what in the world does Matthew mean when he says this? Well, he's using this in sort of a summary fashion. By the New Testament times, Galileans were sort of the despised by the elite aristocracy of Jerusalem. They were just a bunch of folks from down in the sticks somewhere and they didn't have any respect for them. Nazareth was just this small village. We probably have more people here on church on Sunday morning then they had living in Nazareth at the time of Jesus. It was just a small town that if you blinked you completely missed it and it was not considered significant. In fact, when Jesus is first introduced to Nathaniel in John 1 He says, "Does anything good come out of Nazareth?" It is a nothing village. There is nothing significant about that. And so, it sort of became proverbial that Nazareth represented an area where – oh, the people that live in Nazareth they have family trees that don't fork. They are not real bright. You go to Nazareth and your IQ is going to drop 50 points. That is how they viewed Nazareth. So the prophets taught that the Messiah would be despised and rejected as an individual in Isaiah 49:1-13; Isaiah 52:13-53:12. But you have various references to the fact that Jesus was despised and rejected. This is summarized in the epithet He is a Nazarene. He is someone who is just looked down upon; somebody who is just rejected. So it summarizes many different things that are said about Him in the Old Testament.

In Isaiah 11:1 there is a passage that reads, "There shall come forth a Rod from the stem of Jesse, and a Branch…" and that should be Nezer. That is a Hebrew word for a branch and a lot of people you may hear or read will say, ahhh, that is where this comes from. No it is not. It is not where this comes from. It comes from the fact that Nezer has nothing to do with Nazarene. It is just a word that has the same consonants. But a Nazarene was somebody who was uneducated, who was looked down upon. So this is a summation. There are other examples in Hebrew writings at the time. There are a couple of rabbinical writings that use this same kind of application. In the Midrash Rabbah 63:11 it says, Hence it is written as in the verse, And I will no more make you a reproach of famine among the nations, However, there is no actual verse that reads like that it is just a combination of the ideas that are found in Ezekiel 36:30 and Joel 1:19. So this was a typical way of sort of a midrash type of interpretation. So that is what we have here in Isaiah 11.

Another category of this is found in Luke 18:31-33, Jesus took the twelve aside and said to them, "Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and all things that are written by the prophets concerning the Son of Man will be accomplished." It is just a summary statement. No prophet every said all this or put it all together, but it is a summary. By putting together all the prophets they indicated that He would be despised. The Gentiles would mock Him, spit on Him, scourge Him and kill Him; all of which is an expression of how they despised the Messiah. So that sort of concludes what I wanted to say about interpretation.

Father, thank You for this opportunity to study through these things again; to be reminded of Your sovereignty in revealing Yourself, revealing Your Word through the writers of Scripture. That this was not something that was just a simple or just a task that is just a narrative of events, but that woven within these narratives there are connections, there are relationships, there are things that You said that have a fuller sense that You brought out in the New Testament, and it is up to us to dig down into Your Word. Pray that we will not take Your Word lightly, but that we would understand the importance of digging into it and learning how to dig into it that we might be equipped fully in our understanding and use of Your Word in every situation that we face in life; and we pray this in Christ's Name. Amen.

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