Heb. 9:24-28 +10: The Finished Work Of Jesus

Heb. 9:24-28 +10: THE FINISHED WORK OF JESUS 4-7-12

Today Lord willing we’re going to think on and talk for a little while about the most important happening that has ever been recorded and that is "THE FINISHED WORK OF JESUS"

* But first I want to give us some solid evidence that Jesus is who He said He was.

At this present time let us realize that we’re well over 2000 years, 20 centuries since the days of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus, of the Apostles, of the writings of the N.T.

Much happened during the time of 100 a.d.

B.C. stands for "before Christ." A.D. stands for the Latin phrase "anno domini" which means "in the year of our Lord."

The birth, life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Christ are the "turning points" in world history.

* During the first century Jesus announced that he was the fulfillment of scripture, meaning O.T. and the prophecies to do with the coming Jewish Messiah, also meaning the Christ.

The writing of the Bible, O.T and the N.T. which had covered as many as 1,500 years from the lifetime of Moses until the death of John the apostle who penned the last book, the Revelation, had come to a close, there was to be no more inspired writings.

LISTEN -- Jesus, who is the subject and purpose of the New Testament, proclaimed in

Matthew 5:17 Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill. ***

John 4:25 -26 The woman saith unto him, I know that Messiah cometh, which is called Christ: when he is come, he will tell us all things. 26Jesus saith unto her, I that speak unto thee am he.

Notice, in these scriptures as well as others He said that He was the Messiah promised by the Old Testament writers.

Let’s be sure and notice exactly what this takes in, He was announcing that the process of writing the Old Testament was already finished. -- The writing of the N.T. would soon get under way; it was not as yet of course.

Listen, if Jesus was not who He said He was then He would have had no way of knowing for sure, that Malachi would be the last and final book of the Old Testament. Malachi never said he was writing the last and final prophetic book. - Malachi lived about 400 years before Jesus.

The Old Testament has hundreds of prophetic verses that spoke of a future Messiah.

And yet Jesus said {HE COME TO FULFILL THE LAW (found in the 1st 5 books of the O.T. --the Penta--teuch, five books) AND THE PROPHETS (Isa. Jer. Dan. Ezk. -- all 17 prophetic books), He knew there would be no more; only God could have known that.

History has never provided us with another messiah or New Testament that was ever widely embraced by people over a sustained period of time.

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* Did it just so happen:

If Jesus was not the Messiah who had been promised by the Old Testament prophets, then why didn’t God continue to raise up prophets, as he did before for so many centuries so we could know who the real Messiah was?

If the New Testament was not the true continuation and fulfillment of the Old Testament, then where is the real New Testament?

And if there was no God controlling the writing of the Bible, then we could have dozens or hundreds of competing Old Testaments, and there could be any number of so called messiahs from any part of the world with each claiming to be the fulfillment of scripture.

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* Consider this:

During the first century, the people of Israel staged an uprising, a war for independence from the Roman Empire, the war ended in 70 A.D., about 40 years after the crucifixion of Jesus. Near the end of the war, the Romans destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem, setting it on fire and leveling it to the ground.

Let’s understand that the Temple was the worship center for Judaism, so without the Temple Judaism was forced to change some important practices.

And now in our day more than 2000 years after the Romans destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem, it has not been rebuilt. -- can we see the providential hand of God at work?

This points out that the first century proved to be the most devastating century of all for Judaism in terms of its long-term consequences.

Did it just so happen that Judaism was forced to change in the very same century that Christianity emerged?

The traditional view is that Judaism has been around since the time of Abraham, about 4,000 years ago, if this is correct then Judaism had been around for about 40 centuries.