JANUARY 16

Hebrews 4:12 ~ ~ “For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.”

Dr. Youssef goes into a general discussion of the prophesies he has listed previously in his book, “How to Read the Bible……”

In “The Case for Christ,” Lee Strobel presents an interview with Louis Lapides, a Jewish Christian scholar who has taught Biblical Studies at Biola University.  Laptides was raised in a conservative Jewish family where the name of Jesus was never spoken.  (he was taught that Jesus was a “god of the Gentiles”).  He grew up with the impression that the New Testament was “a handbook on anti-Semitism: how to hate Jews.”

In the 1960’s, Lapides was drafted and sent to Vietnam.  He survived the war, but searched for meaning in marijuana, LSD and Eastern religion – and he was even tempted for a while toward Satanism. 

In 1969, Lapides got into a discussion about God with a Los Angeles street preacher.  The preacher gave him a Bible and challenged him to read it for himself.

Being Jewish, he was reluctant to accept the challenge.  “I’ll read the Old Testament,” he said, “but I’m not going to open up the other one.”

“Fine,” the preacher said.  “Just read the Old Testament and ask the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob – the God of Israel – to show you if Jesus is the Messiah.”

He began reading the Old Testament – and when he got to Isaiah 53, he was shocked.  The entire chapter was an unmistakable description of a Messiah who would suffer and die for the sins of the world.

Isaiah’s description of Jesus was so detailed and perfect that Lapides suspected Christians had tampered with the Old Testament text, so he obtained a Jewish Bible and read its translation of Isaiah 53 – it was identical in its description of the suffering Messiah.

Laptides continued reading all the prophecies of the Messiah throughout the Old Testament, and was forced to his knees.  On a trip to the Mojave Desert with friends, he went out alone and prayed:

“God, I accept Jesus into my life.  I don’t understand what I’m supposed to do with Him but I want Him.”

The prophecies of Jesus in the Old Testament are so numerous, specific, and compelling that a Jewish unbeliever can be led to Christ purely by reading them.  As Scottish minister Alexander McLaren (1826-1910) observed, “Great tracts of Scripture are dark t us till life explains them, and then they come to us with the force of a new revelation.  So it is with the Old Testament prophecies that Jesus fulfilled.

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How wonderfully does the Lord find His chosen!  Jesus is a seeking Shepherd as well as a saving Shepherd.  Though many of those His Father gave Him have gone near to hell’s gate, the Lord, by searching and seeking, discovers them and draws near to them in grace.  He has sought us out: let us have good hope for those who are laid upon our hearts in prayer, for he will find them out also.

The Lord repeats this process when any of His flock stray from the pastures of truth and holiness.  He will, by providence and grace, pursue them into foreign lands, into abodes of poverty, into dens of obscurity, into deeps of despair; he will not lose one that the Father has given Him.  It is a point of honor with Jesus to seek and to save all the flock, without a single exception.

Ezekiel 34:11

For thus says the Lord God:  “Indeed I Myself will search for My sheep and seek them out.”

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Habakkuk 2:4 Hebrews 10:3, Romans 1:4, Galatians 3:11

“The just shall live by faith”

Ephesians 3:20-21

Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

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