Welcome to Buoy, a Life in Deeper Water podcast.

Episode 68.

The Prophetic Voice of a Sovereign God (it’s all about His Son, and our redemption)

Hello human.

How are you? It has been a while since I reminded you why I do BUOY, what is foremost on my heart when I think about the challenges you may face—a simmering sorrow, an unexpected grief, a waning love, ascending hate, runaway anger, all the emotions, all the questions, the troubles that come with our earthly walk. So today, before I start, I want to tell you how I keep you in my focus, in the words of apostle Paul:

Ephesians 1:17

17 I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better.

 

I deeply want this for you. And the only way I really know how to help is to talk to you, share with you how I know God, how I know Jesus, and how the Holy Spirit guides my days, my decisions, my dignity as a child of God.

Today I am in-between. I have just finished reading the Old Testament and I am starting the New Testament in a few days. We were left with Nehemiah, having completed the wall around the second temple, and going back after a few years to find the Israelites again turning away from God. Again, having to put things into divine order for a second time. We were left with a whole lot of loose ends, bad behavior, and generation after generation “doing evil in the eyes of the Lord.”

If you didn’t know, there’s 400 years between the two testaments. It is called the intertestamental period. God was silent. I have yet to read about what historically happened during that time. Not today.

But I am preparing for a full read-through of the story of Jesus’ earthly life and those brave disciples and apostles who built the church. The Gospels through Revelation. I thought it would be a meaningful transition to review the 300+ prophecies about Jesus in the Old Testament and how He fulfilled them in the New Testament. No commentary, just a simple list that parallels Old Testament verses to New Testament scriptures.

A year ago, I wouldn’t have cared so much about doing this. But God is growing my Spirit as I experience what it is like to be fully immersed in God’s story. A panoramic spirt-scape. More about Him. Less about me.

Having read through the Old Testament, with it fresh on my mind, the power of a prophesy has new meaning for me. When I read the Old Testament prophecy I know more about the context of it, and remember, oh yeah, that is when this happened, and Moses did this, or, yes, Paul did say that… so it is substantive prep for bringing Jesus onto the earthly Biblical scene. Prophecies are like spiritual steppingstones to the cross of Jesus.

To see what He said, and how His actions, His divine calling fulfilled what God told us in the beginning.

And that’s the point. In the beginning.

In the Beginning, God.

God’s story has always come before me, before you, before any of us. God’s story starts with His sovereign nature.

Genesis 1:1

1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

 

God was here… before. Before anything we can envision. And His Spirit was “hovering” over the deep.

Yet I was in His plan at that moment. With 2,000 years of roaming, defying, repenting as His chosen people, then “all” that Jesus fulfilled, then another 2,000 years. Before I was born.

What is mentally lingering from reading the prophecies are four words:  Covenant, first-born, atonement, and glory. God’s prophecies run through His story; divinity defines the plot.

Covenant

The word “covenant” according to Strong’s says this: when between God and man, a covenant is “a divine ordinance with signs or pledges.”  Arguably, there are several major covenants throughout the Old Testament, coming into fulfillment through the New Covenant, which is Jesus.

Learning what they are, frames God’s narrative with His chosen people, and all people. Let’s look at the covenant God made with Abraham. And how Jesus fulfilled it.

God promised Abraham the whole world would be blessed through him. Jesus, descended from Abraham, is that blessing.     

Genesis 12:3

3 I will bless those who bless you,

    and whoever curses you I will curse.

and all peoples on earth

    will be blessed through you.”

Acts 3:25

25 And you are heirs of the prophets and of the covenant God made with your fathers. He said to Abraham, ‘Through your offspring all peoples on earth will be blessed.’

Matthew 1:1

1 This is the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah the son of David, the son of Abraham:

Galatians 3:16

16 The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed.

 

God promised Abraham He would establish an everlasting covenant with Isaac’s offspring. Jesus is that offspring as from the tribe of Judah, the son of Jacob, the son of Isaac.           

Genesis 17:19

19 Then God said, “Yes, but your wife Sarah will bear you a son, and you will call him Isaac.[a] I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his descendants after him.

Matthew 1:1-2

1 This is the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah the son of David, the son of Abraham:

2 Abraham was the father of Isaac,

Isaac the father of Jacob,

Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers,

 

God promises a new covenant. Jesus provides the work for that new covenant.   

Jeremiah 31:31-34

31 “The days are coming,” declares the Lord,

    “when I will make a new covenant

with the people of Israel

    and with the people of Judah.

32 It will not be like the covenant

    I made with their ancestors

when I took them by the hand

    to lead them out of Egypt,

because they broke my covenant,

    though I was a husband to[a] them, [b]”

declares the Lord.

33 “This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel

    after that time,” declares the Lord.

“I will put my law in their minds

    and write it on their hearts.

I will be their God,

    and they will be my people.

34 No longer will they teach their neighbor,

    or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’

because they will all know me,

    from the least of them to the greatest,”

declares the Lord.

“For I will forgive their wickedness

    and will remember their sins no more.”

Matthew 26:27-29

27 Then he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you. 28 This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. 29 I tell you, I will not drink from this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom.”

 

All the sacrifices the Israelites made over 2,000 years, human lives in battles, sacrifices of livestock, all the blood that was spilled to honor the glory of God, the altar offerings all ultimately fell short.

It was the spilled blood of Jesus that lead to the new covenant of grace.

This is the communion cup we drink from, as did the disciples in the Upper Room.

Firstborn

Within the Mosaic law, the Jews were to devote the firstborn males to God. Another way of saying this is, make God the priority.

Exodus 13:2

2 “Consecrate to me every firstborn male. The first offspring of every womb among the Israelites belongs to me, whether human or animal.”

And Jesus is Mary’s firstborn male.

Luke 2:7

7 and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them.

 

Jesus is also the “firstborn” over creation and the “firstborn” of the dead.

Colossians 1:15-18

15 The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16 For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. 17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 18 And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy.

Atonement

Moses promised God would atone for His people.

Deuteronomy 32:43

Rejoice, you nations, with his people, for he will avenge the blood of his servants; he will take vengeance on his enemies and make atonement for his land and people.

 

Jesus’ sacrifice is that atonement.    

Romans 3:25

25 God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood—to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished—

Hebrews 2:17

17 For this reason he had to be made like them, fully human in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people.

Linking the historical timeline of the Israelites, their journey, all of it, to the One who fulfilled all that they fell short of doing. This is when we begin to see a little divine light from heaven (like Stephen when he was being stoned to death), to, if only briefly comprehend the universal scale of God’s sovereign nature.

Acts 7:55

But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God.

 

To be “in the beginning.”  And to accept the sacrifice of Jesus as the ending to our earthly story.

Glory

A beautiful and enduring prophetic assurance comes from the God of Moses, the same God of the apostle John.

Deuteronomy 30:14

14 No, the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart so you may obey it.

John 1:1

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

This summons me to yield to the power of a sovereign God. He is the origin of my beginnings.

I yield to the sacrifice Jesus made for me. He fulfills my covenant with God.

As I head toward Galilee, the neighborhood Jesus grew up in, this prophecy proclaims the path of His life on earth.

Zechariah 2:10

10 “Shout and be glad, Daughter Zion. For I am coming, and I will live among you,” declares the Lord.

 

And to fulfill this prophecy, I echo John’s affirmation of Jesus, on earth.

John 1:14

14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

 

It’s personal, human.

Next stop: Grace. Truth and the Gospels.