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Showing By The Scriptures That The Christ Is Jesus Acts 18:28
Showing By The Scriptures That The Christ Is Jesus Acts 18:28
I think it is impossible to overemphasize the importance of Jesus in the scheme of the history of the world. From the beginning God made promise that Satan and sin would be destroyed. The means of such victory was to be through a 'son of woman'. We read and read through thousands of years of history and many generations to get from Adam to Jesus. All along the way, God kept foretelling the coming of this savior.
We then see that this preaching of Jesus as the Christ is continually bound up in the telling of the old testament story.
Phillip, beginning from 'this scripture' (Isa. 53), preached Christ unto the Ethiopian (Acts 8). In Thessalonica, "Paul went in, as was his custom, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead, and saying, “This Jesus, whom I proclaim to you, is the Christ.” (Acts 14:2-3). Apollos "powerfully refuted the Jews in public, showing by the Scriptures that the Christ was Jesus" (Acts 18:28).
When Paul argues his case before Felix he states: "…this I confess to you, that according to the Way, which they call a sect, I worship the God of our fathers, believing everything laid down by the Law and written in the Prophets, having a hope in God, which these men themselves accept, that there will be a resurrection of both the just and the unjust" (Acts 24:14-15). As Paul testifies before Agrippa he states: "To this day I have had the help that comes from God, and so I stand here testifying both to small and great, saying nothing but what the prophets and Moses said would come to pass: that the Christ must suffer and that, by being the first to rise from the dead, he would proclaim light both to our people and to the Gentiles" (Acts 26:22-23).
The book of Acts closes with Paul in Rome. "From morning till evening he expounded to them, testifying to the kingdom of God and trying to convince them about Jesus both from the Law of Moses and from the Prophets" (Acts 28:23).
We see then that Peter quotes and makes application of such Old Testament prophecies of Jesus. In Acts 2 he quotes from Joel 2:28-32; Psalms Ps 16:8–11; Psalm 110; and alludes to Psalm 132:11; 2 Sam 7:12f; Ps 89:3f. In Acts 3 he ties it to the Promise to Abraham and the announcements of the prophets. In Stephen’s speech, he outlines that basic history of the Jewish people (Acts 7). In solving the problem over circumcision we find the apostles quoting Amos 9:11. Paul, like Stephen, goes into a synagogue and recites the history of the Jewish people and sums it up with Jesus (Acts 13). As the apostles write the letters that make up our New Testament, they quote time and again from 'the scriptures'.
What God has said before, He has fulfilled in Jesus. This was and is the foundation argument concerning both God's wisdom and sovereignty. How strong would OUR faith be if we were immersed in the scripture enough to show "by the Scriptures that the Christ was Jesus"? What faith in God and confidence in His word we would have! What conviction concerning Jesus we would have! Let us fill our hearts and minds with this story and then fill the world with this teaching.
Hugh DeLong
