The Old Testament Witness to Christ and His Kingdom, Mentor's Guide, MG09

/ 1 5 9

T H E O L D T E S T A M E N T W I T N E S S T O C H R I S T A N D H I S K I N G D O M

The Promise Universalized

page 329 1

Welcome in the strong name of Jesus Christ! After your reading, study, discussion, and application of the materials in this lesson, you will be able to: • Define the term for Messiah in the Greek messias , the Aramaic form of the Hebrew mashiach , which means “to anoint”; Christos is the equivalent NT terminology meaning “anointed one.” • Provide a general overview of the basic characteristics of OT Messianic prophecy, including its focus on the deliverance of God’s people, its strong use of figurative language, its predictions in the “prophetic perfect” tense (as if they were already accomplished), and their lack of easy-to-understand timetables as to their precise fulfilment. The main characteristic is its linkage of the testaments to Jesus Christ as the fulfillment of its prophetic descriptions. • Outline the lineage of the Messiah as given in the OT literature, which includes the seed of the woman in Genesis, of the line of Seth, the seed of Abraham, the lineage of Isaac, through the house of Jacob, of the tribe and clan of Judah, through Boaz, Obed, Jesse and David, down to the person of Jesus of Nazareth. • Show how OT Messianic prophecy is key to understanding the OT witness to Christ: it is the way that Jesus and the apostles applied the OT to his life, these prophecies illumine our understanding of the way Jesus used the OT, they directly connected the testaments (in the way Augustine suggested, that the OT is revealed in the NT), and finally, that Jesus of Nazareth fulfills the prophetic predictions of the expected Messiah. • Give a brief sketch of the main points included in the OT Messianic prophecies which give witness to Christ and his Kingdom, including prophecies about his birth at Bethlehem, his prophetic forerunner, and his identity as Immanuel. • Include in the sketch the main prophetic predictions about Messiah’s person and life, i.e., his introduction by the coming “voice in the wilderness,” his divine status as Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God,

Lesson Objectives

4