When tribulation strikes, when unspeakable atrocities stare us in the face, are we going to be like the disciples, hiding in a room, leaving town, forgetting what He said would happen, what He has promised us?
Or will we remember that He said:
“I will never leave or forsake you.”
“I have plans for you, to give you a future and a hope.”
“I have given you all things that pertain to life and godliness.”
“I am the bread of life.”
“I am the way, the truth, the life.”
“I am the shepherd. My sheep hear my voice.”
“I collect your tears in a bottle.”
“You are the apple of my eye.”
“Nothing can separate you from the love of Christ.”
“If I be lifted up, I draw all men to me.”
“I am the vine, you are the branches.”
“I am the light of the world.”
“I have loved you with an everlasting love.”
“I will replace your heart of stone with a heart of flesh.”
“I have left you a comforter who will teach you all things.”
“I am coming back.”
He is risen . . . just one more promise kept. Behold, He will keep them all in due time. His justice is not swift . . . He would that none would perish. But justice will come. His promises are true.
It is our desire to help you grow in your knowledge of Adonai and His Word. If you are looking for additional information and/or materials, please visit our website at RootedinHisWord.org and our Facebook page.
Throughout the history of the Jews, many prophets of God spoke of the coming Messiah, the Promised One. The following is not intended to be an exhaustive list but rather a representation of some of the Old Testament Prophecies that were fulfilled in the life and suffering of Jesus Christ:
Psalm 2:7-9
“I will declare the decree: The LORD has said to Me, ‘You are My Son, Today I have begotten You. Ask of Me, and I will give You The nations for Your inheritance, And the ends of the earth for Your possession. You shall break them with a rod of iron; You shall dash them to pieces like a potter’s vessel.”
Psalm 110:1-2, 4
The LORD said to my Lord, “Sit at My right hand, Till I make Your enemies Your footstool.” The LORD shall send the rod of Your strength out of Zion. Rule in the midst of Your enemies! . . . The LORD has sworn And will not relent, “You are a priest forever According to the order of Melchizedek.”
Psalm 69:20-21
Reproach has broken my heart, And I am full of heaviness; I looked for someone to take pity, but there was none; And for comforters, but I found none. They also gave me gall for my food, And for my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.
Isaiah 50:5-7
The Lord GOD has opened My ear; And I was not rebellious, Nor did I turn away. I gave My back to those who struck Me, And My cheeks to those who plucked out the beard; I did not hide My face from shame and spitting. For the Lord GOD will help Me; Therefore I will not be disgraced; Therefore I have set My face like a flint, And I know that I will not be ashamed.
Isaiah 53:1-10
Who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed? For He shall grow up before Him as a tender plant, And as a root out of dry ground. He has no form or comeliness; And when we see Him, There is no beauty that we should desire Him. He is despised and rejected by men, A Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him; He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.
Surely He has borne our griefs And carried our sorrows; Yet we esteemed Him stricken, Smitten by God, and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, And by His stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; We have turned, every one, to his own way; And the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and He was afflicted, Yet He opened not His mouth; He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, And as a sheep before its shearers is silent, So He opened not His mouth. He was taken from prison and from judgment, And who will declare His generation? For He was cut off from the land of the living; For the transgressions of My people He was stricken. And they made His grave with the wicked-But with the rich at His death, Because He had done no violence, Nor was any deceit in His mouth.
Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief. When You make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days, And the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in His hand.
The incarnation of Yeshua (Jesus the Christ) was something God had planned for from the foundation of time, that we would be in Christ and Christ in us. That Christ (Messiah) would, through his humanity, bring us into his relationship with the Father by the power of the Spirit. That is the beauty of the life, passion and resurrection of Jesus. May God bless you during this season as you seek to understand the unfathomable goodness of a God who would become man to save those who were totally uninterested not to mention unworthy of salvation. Great is God and worthy of all praise!
It is our desire to help you grow in your knowledge of Adonai and His Word. If you are looking for additional information and/or materials, please visit our website at RootedinHisWord.org and our Facebook page.
In Exodus, God gives Israel the Torah (instructions). Many have translated this “law,” but Torah is much more than law. It is the hedges God has given His people for the abundant life, the God-pleasing life. The Torah was a gift to man, to help him to realize his total inability to meet God’s standard and his obvious and ongoing need for a Savior . . . who bleeds. According to Paul, the “law was our tutor to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith.” Galatians 3:24
The atonement provided for under the law was only intended as a temporary fix, to cover the sin in order that the worshiper might approach and fellowship with God. It was never intended to take sin away.
In Leviticus, an often overlooked book of the Bible, God lays out a means by which man may atone for sin in order to be able to have restored relationship with God. He sets up the place for fellowship (Mercy Seat) – where He will meet with man – through His representative (the High Priest). He carefully details every piece of wood, precious stone, curtain, garment, utensil of the worship.
The starting point of the worship of God was the bronze altar where the sacrifices were made. It was a bloody place. At the time of the feasts, the valley behind the temple would have been flowing with blood from the many sacrifices being offered. Shed blood was a central part of the worship and approach to God. No one entered the presence of God without a blood covering, a sacrifice to atone for sin.
God told His people in Leviticus 17:11, “For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls, for it is the blood that makes atonement for the soul.”
All this was looking forward to the cross, the shed blood of the Lamb of God, the blood that would atone for the sin of the whole world.
Check out our next blog for more about The Resurrection.
It is our desire to help you grow in your knowledge of Adonai and His Word. If you are looking for additional information and/or materials, please visit our website at RootedinHisWord.org and our Facebook page.
Before Creation, before man was in need of a Savior, there existed a God who loved. The celebration of the Resurrection of Christ (the Messiah) is about God’s love.
The need for the passion and Resurrection of Jesus is first revealed in Genesis 3:15. When man violated the one command God had given him, man’s perfect fellowship with God was broken. Easter represents his one way back to that fellowship.
God is holy. Sinful man cannot approach or have a close relationship with a holy God. Such sin is an abomination to God. Just as darkness and light cannot co-exist in the physical realm, so too holiness and sin cannot co-exist in the spiritual realm.
In the chapters of Genesis, the reader is given plenteous evidence why a Savior is needed. In only a few generations, the heart of man was so far from God that God Himself said, “the wickedness of man [is] great in the earth, and . . . every intent of the thoughts of his heart [is] evil continually.”
Man, without God, is hopelessly unable obtain righteousness. God is just. He will judge evil and sin as seen in the worldwide flood, the confusion of language at the tower of Babel and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.
The wages or payment for sin is death. Romans 6:23.
It is appointed for men to die once, but after this, the judgment. Hebrews 9:24
Don’t lose hope. This is not the end of the story. Check out our next post for more of the salvation story unfolding.
It is our desire to help you grow in your knowledge of Adonai and His Word. If you are looking for additional information and/or materials, please visit our website at RootedinHisWord.org and our Facebook page.
As we approach the celebration of Yeshua’s arrest, trial(s), passion, burial and resurrection, evaluate your Bible Literacy–take the Easter Quiz and then check your results against the Answer Key
It is our desire to help you grow in your knowledge of Adonai and His Word. If you are looking for additional information and/or materials, please visit our website at RootedinHisWord.org and our Facebook page.
Read Matthew Chapter 28 1. What happened the day after the Sabbath according to Matthew 28:1-4?
2. What did the angel say to the women according to Matthew 28:5-7?
3. Who appeared to the women as they went to tell the disciples what they learned at the tomb according to Matthew 28:9-10? What did He say?
4. What happened with regard to the chief priests and elders in Matthew 28:11-15?
5. Where did the disciples go according to Matthew 28:16? Why?
6. What was their reaction when they saw Jesus according to Matthew 28:17?
7. Review the resurrection in the other gospels and note things that Matthew does not record.
8. Copy Jesus’ statement to them from Matthew 28:18-20. Meditate on this. Record your thoughts and impressions.
It is our desire to help you grow in your knowledge of Adonai and His Word. If you are looking for additional information and/or materials, please visit our website at RootedinHisWord.org and our Facebook page.
Easter is easy to locate in Leviticus . . . just follow the blood. If you have read through the Bible, you may remember Leviticus as one of the more challenging books to get through.
In a chapter near the middle of the book, we find out the purpose of all the blood-letting and sacrifice outlined in Leviticus and other books of the law. Leviticus 17:11 says, ‘For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood that makes atonement for the soul.’
This statement is a foundational pillar of God’s plan for salvation. Atonement is defined by dictionary.com as “satisfaction or reparation for a wrong or injury; amends.” Had we been alive when sacrifices were being offered in the Tabernacle or the Temple, we would have seen blood flowing from the altar and out of the place of worship. Blood (the sacrifice of life that it represents) and worship are intertwined and inseparable in the Bible. The offerings (Korban) were a means to draw near to Adonai. For the worshiper to be able to meet God, it took a lot of spilled blood and the loss of at least one animal’s life.
Formula for approaching God in Leviticus: Prepare for worship = spill blood
The picture of the sacrifice with the blood spilling out to atone for the sin of the one seeking to approach God was a picture of what was required when God sent His only Son to be the perfect and final sacrifice.
It is our desire to help you grow in your knowledge of Adonai and His Word. If you are looking for additional information and/or materials, please visit our website at RootedinHisWord.org and our Facebook page.
Here are the questions and answers to the Easter I.Q. Test:
1. What Jewish holiday was Jesus celebrating right before his trial and subsequent crucifixion? PASSOVER
2. What event did the Prophet Zechariah foretell in his statement “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your King is lowly and riding on a donkey, a colt, the foal of a donkey.” (Zechariah 9:9) JESUS’ TRIUMPHAL ENTRY INTO JERUSALEM
3. What Easter-related event is predicted to the day in Daniel 9? MESSIAH’S RIDING INTO JERUSALEM ON A DONKEY (REPRESENTING HIMSELF AS A KING OF PEACE)
4. Where was Jesus taken first after his arrest? HOUSE OF ANNAS
5. Upon whose testimony was Jesus sentenced to death? HIS OWN. THEY COULD NOT FIND TWO WITNESSES WHO AGREED AND JESUS FINALLY ANSWERED THE QUESTION, “ARE YOU THE CHRIST, THE SON OF GOD?” “IT IS AS YOU SAY.”
6. To what representative of the Roman government was Jesus taken for permission to carry out the death sentence? PONTIUS PILATE, ROMAN GOVERNOR
7. What prisoner was released instead of Jesus at the request of the crowd? What crimes was he accused of? BARABAS, REBELLION, ROBBERY, MURDER
8. How many men were crucified with Jesus? THREE
9. Who are two of the people (there were more than 2) at the cross when Jesus died? JOHN, MARY, THE MOTHER OF JESUS; MARY’S SISTER; MARY THE WIFE OF CLOPAS; AND MARY MAGDALENE.
10. What is in the tomb where Jesus was laid after he died on the cross? NOTHING. THE TOMB IS EMPTY! HALLELUJAH! HE IS RISEN!
It is our desire to help you grow in your knowledge of Adonai and His Word. If you are looking for additional information and/or materials, please visit our website at RootedinHisWord.org and our Facebook page.
Answer the following basic questions about Resurrection Sunday (Easter) and find out your Easter I.Q. :
1. What Jewish holiday was Jesus celebrating right before his trial and subsequent crucifixion?
2. What event did the Prophet Zechariah foretell in his statement “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your King is lowly and riding on a donkey, a colt, the foal of a donkey.” (Zechariah 9:9)
3. What Easter-related event is predicted to the day in Daniel 9?
4. Where was Jesus taken first after his arrest?
5. Upon whose testimony was Jesus sentenced to death?
6. To what representative of the Roman government was Jesus taken for permission to carry out the death sentence?
7. What prisoner was released instead of Jesus at the request of the crowd? What crimes was he accused of?
8. How many men were crucified with Jesus?
9. Who are two of the people (there were more than 2) at the cross when Jesus died?
10. What is in the tomb where Jesus was laid after he died on the cross?
Be sure to write your answers down. The key to the quiz will be in tomorrow’s post.
It is our desire to help you grow in your knowledge of Adonai and His Word. If you are looking for additional information and/or materials, please visit our website at RootedinHisWord.org and our Facebook page.
As we look forward to celebrating and remembering the passion, trial, burial and resurrection of Yeshuah, the Messiah, I will be giving you links to some of the helpful blog posts we did on related topics.
It is our desire to help you grow in your knowledge of Adonai and His Word. If you are looking for additional information and/or materials, please visit our website at RootedinHisWord.org and our Facebook page.
Rooted and Grounded 