The Promises Of His Life Series

THE PROMISED SAVIOR – The Promises of His Life

Malachi 3:1 NIV

"See, I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me. Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come," says the Lord Almighty.

INTRODUCTION:

One of my favorite subjects in school was math. To this day I still enjoy from time to time playing around with numbers. Of particular interest to me is probability—the chance that something will happen. For instance the piano has 88 keys, so the probability of me hitting any one of those keys is 1:88. Now if I were to ask one of you to come and play just one of those keys what would be the probability that you would play the same note that I just played. Some might think 2:88 which actually reduces to 1:44; well that’s not it as 1:44 is actually a better chance of hitting the same note I played than I had of playing any one of the 88 keys. So if your chance of hitting the same note must be greater then someone might think the probability would be 1:176 or 1:(88*2). Well that is a smaller chance than 1:88 but it’s not right. The actual probability is 1:7,744 or 1:(88*88). Each of us have 88 keys to choose from so the odds of hitting the same key grows exponentially.

Last week we looked at The Promise of His Birth. Now by my count the Old Testament has at least 12 prophetic statements concerning the birth of the Promised Savior. If we count what some might consider duplicates only once then there are at least 9 prophecies concerning the Promised Savior What is the probability that anyone could fulfill all 9 of those prophetic statements? Now it’s not like the piano for just 2 of us to hit the same key. This is not just to fulfill one prophecy, but all 9 or 12 if you want to really make it difficult. To fulfill each prophecy would be like me going to the piano and playing all 88 keys and then you playing the same 88 keys in the same order. It wouldn’t be 1:882 but 1:8888. So for one person to fulfill 9 prophetic statements would not simply be 1:92, but 1:99 or 1:387,420,489. Now that’s nearly impossible! If we were to consider the probability of all 12 that would be 1:1212 or 1:8,916,100,448,256. I think we are safe to say that without God’s help that is impossible!

But guess what. God was not done with just 9 or 12 prophecies. God did not just speak about the birth of the Promised Savior. God also spoke prophetically about His life, and as we will see next week even His death and incredibly His resurrection too. Humanly it is impossible for anyone to fulfill the prophecies made concerning the Promised Savior. But it was not left to human chance. What God said He fulfilled.

Today we are going to continue looking at The Promised Savior as we consider the wonder and majesty of what was spoken through the prophets concerning THE PROMISES OF HIS LIFE.

I. The Promise to Proclaim His Arrival

 Malachi 3:1 NIV

"See, I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me. Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come," says the Lord Almighty.

1. God announced the coming of the Promised Savior!

a) God knew there would be people like me who would figure out that it would be impossible for anyone to be born in keeping with all the promises made. So God promised there would be one to proclaim His arrival, to say “Look, here He is. The one you are seeking has come!”

b) The role of being the promised messenger was fulfilled in John the Baptist. It was John who announce the arrival of the Promised Savior and prepared the way for His coming.

 Luke 3:15-16 NIV

15 The people were waiting expectantly and were all wondering in their hearts if John might possibly be the Christ. 16 John answered them all, “I baptize you with water. But one more powerful than I will come, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.”

 John 1:29-30 NIV

29 The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! 30 This is the one I meant when I said, ’A man who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.’”

2. Like John the Baptist I stand today to proclaim that the Promised Savior has come!