Transcript

Bernard and Lena were sitting down to their usual breakfast and morning cup of coffee when they got a notification on their phone about the weather.

“There will be 3 to 5 inches of snow today, and a snow emergency has been declared,” the notification said. “You must park your cars on the odd-numbered side of the streets.”

Bernard said, “Oh man. Okay,” and got up from his coffee to repark his car.

The next day they were sitting down with their breakfast. A weather notification came in again, “There will be 2 to 4 inches of snow today, and a snow emergency has been declared. You must park your cars on the even-numbered side of the streets.” Again, Bernard replied, “Oh man. Okay,” and got up from his coffee to repark his car.

Two days later, again they’re sitting down with their breakfast and cups of coffee and the scrolling notification of the weather forecast said, “There will be 6 to 8 inches of snow today, and a snow emergency has been declared. You must park your cars on the…”

But then the phone buffered, and the Wi-Fi went out and Bernard didn’t get the rest of the instructions. He turned to Lena, “Oh no! What am I going to do now, Lena?”

Lena replied, “Bernard, would you just leave the car in the garage today.”

Weather forecasts are not always accurate, but they can cause us to act in light of what we are told is coming.

God’s promises and prophecies are always accurate. And the fulfillment of God’s prophecies reminds us that everything the Bible says is true and is going to happen, and that we can trust the Bible.

And as we rightly divide the Word of truth, and we understand the promises that have been made directly to the Body of Christ, we should act and live in light of the promises made to us. Because they will all be fulfilled exactly as God has said.

Luke 24:44-45: “And he said unto them, These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me. Then opened he their understanding, that they might understand the Scriptures.”

One of the authenticating proofs for the inspiration of the Bible are the many fulfilled prophecies that find their fulfillment in the person and life of Jesus Christ.

In Scripture, we find an array of prophecies that extend over hundreds and even thousands of years by many different writers and they find their complete fulfillment in one person, Jesus of Nazareth.

Following our Lord’s resurrection, the Lord reminded His disciples that before the Cross, He had previously taught them that He would fulfill everything written about the Messiah in the Old Testament.

Christ is stating plainly that in the Old Testament we will find prophecies referring to Himself. In these prophecies, and their fulfillment, we find the truth and evidence that Christ is the Messiah, the Son of God, and all that He claimed to be.

The threefold division of the Old Testament that the Lord mentions of “the law of Moses,” “the prophets” and “the psalms” encompasses and takes in the whole Old Testament.

There is no part of Old Testament Scripture that does not bear witness to the Messiah, and to the Lord Jesus Christ. All Scripture points us to Him.

Peter told Cornelius and his household in Acts 10:43: “To Him give all the prophets witness.” In John 5:39, the Lord said, “Search the Scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of Me.”

The Lord said here in Luke 24:44 that “all things,” or every promise, all prophecies of God concerning the person and work of the Messiah “must be fulfilled.”

Notice that our Lord didn’t say that these prophecies “WILL be fulfilled,” but that they MUST be fulfilled. God’s Word prophesied it and stated it, and therefore it MUST be fulfilled as God declared it! Because God is always faithful to His Word.

As our Lord stated in John 10:35, “The Scripture cannot be broken.” Many prophecies were fulfilled at Christ’s first coming, and there are more that will be and must be fulfilled at His second coming to Israel.

Zechariah 9:9: “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold, thy King cometh unto thee: he is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass.”

As we walk through some of the prophecies that were fulfilled by the Lord Jesus Christ, the first one here in Zechariah 9 is regarding the Lord’s triumphal entry.

It’s been said that “This text [Zechariah 9:9] is one of the most messianically significant passages of all the Bible.”

And this prophecy was fulfilled when the Lord took His last journey to Jerusalem prior to and leading to the Cross. It was perfectly fulfilled at Christ’s triumphal entry, an event that is recorded in all four Gospel records.

In Matthew 21, we read about the Lord, in His omniscience as God, sending two of His disciples to Bethpage to find two donkeys.

And He told them, “Go into the village over against you, and straightway ye shall find an ass tied, and a colt with her: loose them, and bring them unto me.”

Christ instructed the two disciples that as they entered the village, they would find a tethered female donkey and her colt. A donkey’s colt was a purebred donkey, one born of a female donkey rather than of a mule.

The disciples found the two donkeys as the Lord said and then responded to their owner as the Lord told them: “The Lord hath need of them.” And this shows that the owner was a follower of the Lord that he then permitted them to be taken without any argument.

Matthew 21:4-5 then states plainly, “All this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying, Tell ye the daughter of Sion, Behold, thy King cometh unto thee, meek, and sitting upon an ass, and a colt the foal of an ass.”

The disciples brought these two donkeys to the Lord, and Mark 11:7 states, “And they brought the colt to Jesus, and cast their garments on him; and he sat upon him.”

Matthew states that they put their clothes actually on both donkeys, on the mother and on her colt, but Mark makes it very clear that Lord sat upon the younger donkey, the colt.

Mark 11:2 says of this colt, that a man had never sat and ridden on it. It was an unbroken colt. So the mother was brought along and walked beside to calm her foal as the Lord rode upon the foal into Jerusalem.

And thus, like Zechariah prophesied, the Lord sat upon a donkey, specifically on a colt, the foal of a donkey.

Donkeys were used in humble, common tasks, in times of peace, while horses were used for wartime. So our Lord, the Prince of Peace, and Israel’s true King and Messiah, was demonstrating humility as He rode on the foal of a donkey.

At Christ’s second coming, He will ride upon a white horse. But at this entrance to His capital city at His first coming, He shows that He had not come to wage war against Israel’s enemies, but in meekness, He had come to save her from her sins.

Zechariah’s prophecy invited Zion and Jerusalem to rejoice at the coming of her promised salvation in the Person of her King.

A king’s coming sometimes inspired fear, but the Messiah’s coming would inspire joy. And His coming was cause for true joy and Israel is told to rejoice greatly at His arrival. And that is what the people did as the Lord rode into Jerusalem.

Matthew 21:9 reads, “And the multitudes that went before, and that followed, cried, saying, Hosanna to the Son of David: Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord; Hosanna in the highest.”

And the prophecy in Zechariah accurately describes four elements of Messiah’s character: (1) He is Israel’s King; (2) He is just or righteous; (3) He brings salvation; and (4) He is lowly, or humble, not proud or boastful.

Our Lord riding upon a donkey into Jerusalem was in perfect fulfillment of prophecy and His entrance into Jerusalem in this manner demonstrated to all Israel that He was this King. He is Israel’s long-awaited Messiah, bringing salvation to her.

Zechariah 11:12-13: “And I said unto them, If ye think good, give me my price; and if not, forbear. So they weighed for my price thirty pieces of silver. And the LORD said unto me, Cast it unto the potter: a goodly price that I was prised at of them. And I took the thirty pieces of silver, and cast them to the potter in the house of the LORD.”

Here in Zechariah 11, we find a prophecy regarding Judas Iscariot. And the prophecy is extremely specific.

In this chapter, the Lord instructed Zechariah to portray the role of a shepherd. In doing so, he became a type of the Messiah. The flock of Israel was destined for slaughter because of their wicked rulers. But Zechariah was to do his best to rescue and help them.

Zechariah, like the coming Messiah, paid special attention to the poor and oppressed of the flock, those who needed special attention and aid.

But when the people end up rejecting Zechariah, this good shepherd, he leaves them to their fate. He then told them “If ye think good, give me my price; and if not, forbear,” or to give him his wages, to pay him for his services.

In response, the people “weighed for my price thirty pieces of silver.” Under the law, according to Exodus 21:32, thirty shekels of silver was the compensation for a slave that had been killed.

The people made Zechariah understand clearly that they did not estimate his service any higher than the labor of a household slave.

This symbolically pictured Christ, the good Shepherd, asking Israel what they felt He was worth to them. And their answer was: the price of a slave, 30 pieces of silver.

The Lord then told Zechariah to “Cast it unto the potter: a goodly price that I was prised at of them.” The money offered was an insult. It was the lowest they could pay.

And that last phrase, with 30 pieces of silver being called “a goodly,” or handsome, princely price is an ironic, sarcastic statement. It means “That magnificent sum at which I am valued by them!”

And of course, this reminds us of Judas Iscariot betraying our Lord for the exact same amount of 30 pieces of silver, and this prophecy was fulfilled in that act of betrayal.

Matthew 26:14-15 reads, “Then one of the twelve, called Judas Iscariot, went unto the chief priests, And said unto them, What will ye give me, and I will deliver him unto you? And they covenanted with him for thirty pieces of silver.”

Our Lord, the Messiah of Israel, was sold and betrayed for 30 pieces of silver. The unbelieving Jewish leaders of Christ’s day offered this same amount to Judas, and by it were saying that Christ was worth no more to them than a common slave.

Judas’s act of betrayal also fulfilled another Messianic prophecy in Psalm 41:9: “Yea, mine own familiar friend, in whom I trusted, which did eat of my bread, hath lifted up his heel against me.”

King David experienced the treachery of a trusted friend betraying him, likely referring to the betrayal of a trusted advisor named Ahithophel, who aided David’s son Absalom in his rebellion to overthrow David’s kingship.

But the Holy Spirit which inspired these words looked further ahead in them to Christ and Judas, and they received a further and fuller fulfillment. As later, the Seed of David, the Lord Jesus Christ, also suffered this same kind of painful betrayal.

Judas “lifted up his heel against” the Lord when he betrayed Him, which pictures a horse that turns and viciously kicks a kind master, with a heavy kick.

In John 13:18, our Lord reveals and stated that this passage was a prophecy of Judas. “I speak not of you all: I know whom I have chosen: but that the scripture may be fulfilled, He that eateth bread with me hath lifted up his heel against me.”

In acting out the drama that pictures the rejection and betrayal of the Good Shepherd, we find that in response to this insulting sum of money being given to Zechariah, the Lord told him to “Cast it unto the potter.”

He was to cast it in disgust, as a vile thing to be rejected, to the potter.

The command by the Lord to throw it to the potter is further illuminated by Zechariah’s action in that last part of the verse, when he threw the pieces of silver into the house of the LORD, or the temple, for the humble potter who worked there.

And we find the fulfillment of this prophecy when Judas tried to return the money to the chief priests and elders and he brought it to them “Saying, I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood. And they said, What is that to us? see thou to that. And he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple, and departed, and went and hanged himself.”

The same thirty pieces of silver paid out to Judas Iscariot by the chief priests for delivering Christ to them were cast down onto the floor in the house of the Lord, the temple, by Judas, just like the prophecy in Zechariah.

And then these chief priests, “took the silver pieces, and said, It is not lawful for to put them into the treasury, because it is the price of blood. And they took counsel, and bought with them the potter’s field, to bury strangers in.”

The priests had scruples about putting blood money into the temple treasury. And by what they decide to do next, they unknowingly fulfilled a prophecy written hundreds of years previous.

The chief priests gave the money to betray Christ, His purchase price, to a potter from whom they bought a field. A potter’s field was a piece of useless land where a potter threw his broken, damaged, rejected, and discarded pots.

And these Jewish leaders used the money to buy this potter’s field as a place where unclean Gentile strangers could be discarded like useless clay pots and buried in Jerusalem.

And just like this messianic prophecy accurately predicted, Christ’s betrayal price was 30 pieces of silver, Judas then cast that money down in the temple, and this money was then given to a potter and was used to buy a potter’s field.

Zechariah 13:7: “Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, and against the man that is my fellow, saith the LORD of hosts: smite the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered: and I will turn mine hand upon the little ones.”

God’s command to the sword to awake against “My Shepherd” speaks of the Shepherd’s death. A sword is an instrument of violent death, and God the Father is predicting the violent death of His Son, the Great Shepherd, at the Cross.

Notice how the Shepherd is called “the man that is My fellow.” This is a powerful declaration of both the humanity and deity of Jesus Christ. Calling the Shepherd “My fellow” shows that the Messiah is coequal with “the Lord of hosts” and is God Himself. As our Lord said in John 10:30, “I and my Father are one.”

This verse prophesies of the awaking of a sword against the Shepherd of Jehovah, and the smiting of this Shepherd, showing that His death is according to the will of God.

Christ’s death as the payment for sin was part of the plans and purposes of God from eternity past. It was “foreordained before the foundation of the world,” 1 Peter 1:20 says.

And Peter stated in Acts 2:23: “Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain.”

The prophecy further states, “Smite the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered.” Thus, when the Shepherd was smitten, it would result in the scattering of the Shepherd’s sheep.

The night He was arrested, the Lord Jesus quoted this part of the verse, claiming the role of the Shepherd, and God’s fellow and Israel’s Messiah who would be smitten, and predicting the scattering of His disciples.

In Matthew 26:31, the Lord told His apostles after they went out into the Mount of Olives to go to the Garden of Gethsemane, “All ye shall be offended because of me this night: for it is written, I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered abroad.”

Christ emphasized that He would be smitten and that the disciples would desert Him very soon, that very night. Fear would overwhelm them and to save their own skins, they would forsake the good Shepherd and scatter.

And later that night, Judas came with the band of men with swords and staves into the Garden of Gethsemane.

Then the Lord addressed that company of men and said, “Are ye come out as against a thief with swords and staves for to take me? I sat daily with you teaching in the temple, and ye laid no hold on me. But all this was done, that the scriptures of the prophets might be fulfilled. Then all the disciples forsook him, and fled” (Matt. 26:55-56).

Zechariah 12:10: “And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications: and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn.”

The passage speaks directly to the fact that there are two comings of the one Messiah. This prophecy is primarily about the second coming of the Messiah to Israel. But you clearly see the first coming by the phrase “they shall look upon Me whom they have pierced.”

First, God says they pierced “Me.” This speaks to the incarnation of deity. No one can pierce God unless God first took on human flesh, and this as we know took place in the Person of Jesus Christ. And Israel also cannot someday look on this One Whom they pierced unless He is then living, having been raised from the dead.

Thus, at the glorious second coming of Christ, Israel will look upon and see the One they had pierced and had crucified at His first coming and Who rose again from the dead.

The Apostle John referred to Zechariah 12:10 in His record of the Cross.

John 19:34-37 states, “But one of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side, and forthwith came there out blood and water…For these things were done, that the scripture should be fulfilled, A bone of him shall not be broken. And again another scripture saith, They shall look on him whom they pierced.”

More than 500 years after the prophecy of Zechariah the Lord used a Roman soldier as the unsuspecting agent to fulfill this prophecy.

When the soldier thrust his sword through Christ’s side as He hung on the cross to make sure He was dead, he inadvertently fulfilled this prophecy in remarkable detail.

The word “pierced” in Zechariah in Hebrew means to thrust through, that is with a spear, javelin, sword, or any such weapon. This accurately expresses the action of the Roman soldier in how he pierced our Lord’s side with a spear.

And this fulfilled prophecy declares to us that Jesus Christ is Israel’s Messiah.

You further see how the Lord was pierced in Psalm 22:16: “For dogs have compassed me: the assembly of the wicked have inclosed me: they pierced my hands and my feet.”

Hundreds of years before crucifixion was ever used as a means of execution, King David prophesied of the Messiah’s hands and feet being pierced through with nails.

Here are a few other fulfilled prophecies at the Cross of Christ, which reveal that He is the Messiah:

Referring to Isaiah’s prophecy 700 years earlier in Isaiah 53:12, when Christ was crucified with two thieves, one on the right and the other on his left, Mark 15:28 reads, “And the scripture was fulfilled, which saith, And he was numbered with the transgressors.”

Referring to David’s prophecy, 1000 years earlier in Psalm 22:18 that His garments would be parted amongst the Roman soldiers and gambled for, Matthew 27:35 states,

“And they crucified him, and parted his garments, casting lots: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, They parted my garments among them, and upon my vesture did they cast lots.”

Referring to David’s prophecy, 1000 years before it happened, that none of His bones would be broken, Psalm 34:20 states, “He keepeth all his bones: not one of them is broken.”

Josh McDowell states this, “The Old Testament, written over a 1,000 year period, contains several hundred references to the coming Messiah. All of these were fulfilled in Jesus Christ, and they establish a solid confirmation of His credentials as the Messiah.” (p. 141)

Studying and discovering the many prophecies that are fulfilled in Jesus Christ, we clearly establish not only that He is the Messiah predicted in the Old Testament, but also that, based on the probability of all these prophecies being fulfilled in One Person, we clearly see that they were given by God Himself and that the Bible is the inspired Word of God.

For example, take 8 prophecies of Christ: He was born in Bethlehem, taken to Egypt to avoid being put to death, He would have a forerunner, He was betrayed for 30 pieces of silver, He rode on a donkey’s colt into Jerusalem, He suffered and died with His hands and feet pierced, He was buried in a rich man’s tomb, and He would rise from the dead.

The probability of this taking place in any one man is 1 in 10 to the 17th power, or 1 with 17 zeros behind, which is one hundred quadrillion.

To count 1 quadrillion it would take around 31.5 million years at the rate of 1 number per second, and then multiply that by 100.

Now raise that to 48 prophecies of Jesus Christ, and we find the chance that any one man fulfilling all forty-eight prophecies to be 1 in 10 to the 157th power, or 1 with 157 zeros behind it, which is the number “ten un-quin-qua-gin-tillion.”

Then remember that there are over 300 prophecies fulfilled by Jesus Christ. The probability of this taking place is astronomical.

Anyone who rejects the fulfilled prophecies in Jesus of Nazareth which shows beyond a doubt that He is the Messiah is rejecting a fact proved perhaps more absolutely than any other fact in the world.

The miracle of fulfilled prophecy in Jesus Christ can get our attention and can bring us to the place where we can clearly see and understand that the Bible is the Word of God and that we can trust it with all our heart.