I was wondering what specific verses Jesus’ coming is prophesied as the Messiah. Something I think that maybe people are just forcing Jesus’ character to fit in with old verses, and wanted to read them for myself, cited from a reliable source.
Thanks in advance!
Some of my favorites (and most compelling) are those gems hidden as side notes or innocuous details in narratives which, when understood in the full context of salvation history ending with Jesus, clearly could not have been contrived by human authors.
One example is in the story of Abraham and Isaac, when Isaac asks where the lamb for sacrifice is, Abraham says, “God himself will provide the lamb.” After Abraham’s hand is stayed by an angel, a lamb is not sacrificed, but instead a ram is found tangled in the thicket. That this story foreshadows heavily the fact that Abraham did not sacrifice his only son, but God did sacrifice his son, Jesus, is an important point, but what is even more breath-taking is that the spot upon which this occurred, Mount Moriah, is precisely the same location where the city of Jerusalem would eventually stand and the Temple built where God, thousands of years later, came through on Abraham’s promise and did “provide the lamb,” Jesus, for sacrifice.
There are subtle details like the fact that the obedient Isaac carried wood up to the sacrifice site, as Jesus, obedient to God’s will, carried the wooden cross to the same site where he, the lamb provided by God, would be “sacrificed.” Two servants accompanied Abraham and Isaac, just as two thieves accompanied Jesus and were crucified with him. Another detail is that when lambs where sacrificed for Passover, they were often splayed on crossed wooden sticks, just as Jesus would be when he was crucified. Not one bone of the lambs was to be broken during sacrifice or when the lamb was eaten as part of the Passover Seder.
