elaborate on some things that our brother Julius preached about just a few weeks ago, on the mission of Christ. So thinking about the mission of Christ, necessary for us when we think about Christology, we're not only thinking about in an abstract sense or only in a theological sense, but there is the second person of the Trinity, our mediator, our redeemer, in a point in time, in a place, in a point in history, came into His creation. He entered into the world that He had made, clothed Himself with our flesh, and walked among us in order to accomplish a very specific task, or a specific purpose, or we could say a very specific mission. So when you study this area of Christology, it is inescapable that we must deal with this topic of the mission of Christ. What has he come to do? And how do we think about those things? And so what I want to consider today, and I'll pray in just a moment, what I want to consider today is how the Old Testament made preparations for this. How the Old Testament was prophesying and foretelling these events, and describing what it would look like. And so that we can understand that even from the Old Testament canon, there should have been some understanding of the nature and the purpose of the servant who would come. And so that's what I want to put before us today, is to think about what does the Old Testament say about the mission of Christ? Let's pray and ask for the Lord to help us. We will be looking at His Word and the full revelation of His Word. So if you want to, as we get ready to pray, turn with me to Luke 24. Luke 24, and let's go and ask for the Lord's help to give us understanding of these things. Father, we're grateful that You have lavished Your mercy upon us. In the person and the work of Your Son, You've made Yourself known. He declared that if we've seen Him, if we know Him, and we've seen the Father also, we pray, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, that You will help us today to come to a richer, fuller understanding of all that You have told us, all that You told Your people well in advance of our Savior coming, of what kind of deliverer He would be, of the things that He must suffer, and the ways in which He would be ultimately exalted and glorified. for our redemption and for the glory of our triune God. And we pray these things in His name, and we ask, Holy Spirit, You give us help as we open Your Word together. Amen. So in Luke 24, this is a familiar scene. This is after the resurrection of Christ. Christ in His resurrected and glorified body is walking among the people. I mean, this is one of the most witnessed events in all of human history was the resurrection of the Lord, seen by His disciples, first by women at the tomb, ultimately seen by 500 people at once. And then for 40 days, He met with His disciples. He continued to instruct them about the kingdom. I'm not going to read all of chapter 24, but here's the scene. There were two disciples. Going to a village named Emmaus, we're told it's about seven miles from Jerusalem, and they're walking along. And they're walking along and they're discussing all that's taken place. I mean, just three days earlier. this man named Jesus of Nazareth, who they had been hoping was in fact the Messiah, was nailed to a Roman cross, he was crucified, he was dead, and he was buried. And now they are forlorn. They are almost to the point of despair, thinking this had been their Messiah, this had been the prophet, this had been the anointed one for whom they had been waiting, and now he's gone. And what do they do? And while they were still talking and discussing, Luke tells us that Jesus comes near to them, but they don't recognize Him. He begins to even speak with them, and interact with them, and ask them questions. And His person is veiled to them in that moment. And Jesus asks them, what is this conversation that you're holding with each other as you walk? And they stood still, looking sad. Then one of them, named Cleopas, answered him, Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know about the things that have happened here, there, in these days? I mean, imagine that scene. They're walking along. Jesus joins them and begins to converse with them and ask them questions, and then, I think it's interesting, tells us that they stopped. You ever had one of those conversations, you're walking along and someone says something, and you just stop. And you look at each other, and essentially, Cleopas asks, what rock have you been under that you don't know these things? How can you be this oblivious that you don't know what has happened here? Because everyone knew. I mean, there are certain events in the life of a nation, the life of a community, that just everybody knows about. I mean, think about this. On, say, the 12th of September in 2001, and someone had asked, so what's been going on? What do you mean, what's been going on? How do you not know these things? That's sort of the weight of what's happening here as they walk along and Jesus joins them. And, of course, Jesus plays along in a sense. He's like a good teacher. He's drawing things out. He says, what things? And they said, concerning Jesus of Nazareth, but listen to how they describe Him. Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, a man who was a prophet, mighty indeed, and word before God and all the people." They don't confess here he's the Son of God. He's a prophet, mighty indeed. Mighty indeed and word before God and all the peoples, and how our chief priests and rulers delivered him up to be condemned to death and crucified him. But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. See, these are two Jewish men, Cleopas and another, who know their Old Testament Scriptures. They know that God had promised to send one to save Israel. And they said, we hoped that He was the one, but now we know that He was not the one because He's dead. He was crucified. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things happened. Moreover, some women of our company amazed us. They were at the tomb early in the morning, and when they did not find his body, they came back saying that they had even seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive." Now, you've probably heard of this before. If you were going to fabricate a fantastical tale of a man coming back from the dead, And to create this narrative, this myth, especially in the ancient Near East, in the first century, you would not have selected women to be the primary eyewitnesses in your story. Women were not even permitted to give testimony in court. They were not considered legally viable witnesses. And so this is part of the amazement of these men. We have this testimony, but it's, Can I use air quotes here? It's only from women. It's suspect. Maybe we shouldn't believe it. And plus, it's also unbelievable. It is also almost fantastical. How could we believe it? Verse 23, and when they did not find his body, they came back saying that they had even seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive. Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but him they did not see. So now we have a mystery. They went to the tomb, they see there's no body here, but we still don't know where he is. We still haven't proved that he's raised from the dead, only that perhaps he's been, the body has been snatched. And notice Jesus' response in verse 25. And he said to them, O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken. See, Jesus does not assume the position or the vantage point that this was unexpected. He assumes from the Scriptures that they ought to have already had some idea about how these events should have transpired. Remember in last week's text, Jesus began to teach His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem. that He must be handed over to sinful, wicked men, that He must suffer and die and rise again on the third day. There was a must-ness, there was a necessity to these things. Jesus is here echoing the very same thing as it were on the other side of the cross. He's saying, was it not necessary? Necessary from where? What made this necessary? Because the Old Testament Scriptures had prophesied this. God had said, through Moses and all of the prophets." Listen to what Jesus says next, "...was it not necessary that the Christ," that's the title, His formal messianic title, "...that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into His glory? And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, He interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself." Now, this is one of the most profound statements in the New Testament. And frankly, this statement from Christ is central to us developing a good, solid, faithful hermeneutic of all the Scriptures. And by hermeneutic, I mean a method of studying all the Scriptures together. And Jesus, beginning with Moses, that's the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible, and all the prophets. Now, that was shorthand for the rest of the Old Testament. And Jesus said He basically took them through, not every verse in a short walk, but He takes them through the arc of the Old Testament, beginning with Moses. No doubt, He began in Genesis chapter 3, or probably Genesis 1 and 2. God created man upright and innocent. And yet man rebelled against God. But there in Genesis 3, verse 15, he promised that a seed of the woman would come. And then Jesus traced this through and said, remember the promise that he made to Abraham, that he would give a seed? Not seeds, but seed. to be a blessing to all of the nations and to save Israel. And then how he restated that promise to Isaac and to Jacob. Then he expanded upon that promise with the covenant made to David that one day a son from your very own loins will sit upon the throne for eternity. And Jesus began with Moses and all the prophets and worked through this and says, all those things were speaking about Jesus of Nazareth, all of them. I was at the Shepherds Conference out at Grace Community Church in California several years ago, and sitting there next to Voti, and we were listening to a Q&A with Dr. MacArthur, whom I greatly admire. They were celebrating and marking over 40 years of ministry. He was about to finish. I think the next Lord's Day, he was going to preach the final message in Mark's Gospel, which would have marked the last of the New Testament. So in 40-something years, he had preached every single verse in the New Testament. And one of the questions asked to him through the Q&A was, what are you going to do next? And MacArthur, who has a really witty sense of humor, was talking about one of the older ladies in his church that said, maybe you should preach the Old Testament. And he chuckled and said, look at me, it took me 40 years to get through the New, do you think I have that much time left with me? But then he, after the laughter died down, he said, you know, but in all seriousness, I think I may preach, I may do a series of sermons on the Christological texts of the Old Testament. And Vody and I kind of chuckled together, because there's an assumption underneath that, that only certain texts are speaking about Christ. You know, Isaiah 53 is an easy one, right? Psalm 2. We can point to certain texts that are clearly messianic, clearly speak about Christ who is to come, but what does Jesus say? Beginning from Moses and all of the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself. Now, look down. in that same chapter in Luke 24, verse 44. Then he said to them, These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the law of Moses and the prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled. Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures and said to them, Thus it was written. that the Christ should suffer, and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things, and behold, I am sending the promise of my Father upon you, but stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high." And of course, the fulfillment of that promise, to be clothed with power from on high, would be fulfilled at Pentecost. So Jesus explains His mission to His disciples by expounding the Old Testament Scriptures and telling them this was necessary from what has already been revealed to you, that the Messiah, the Anointed One, the Christ, the great prophet, priest, and King of Israel would be glorified by means of humiliation and suffering. Now, the other thing that we see is not only does the Old Testament itself speak this way about Jesus, but the Old Testament covenants, as we trace through the progression of the covenants, also testify in the same way. In John 5, Jesus is speaking to the Jews, to the rulers of Israel, and he says, you search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life, and it is they that bear witness about me. For if you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote of me. You ever read the Leviticus and think, yeah, Moses is writing about Jesus here? But he is. All those ordinances, all the calls for holiness, All of the urgings upon God's people of the necessity of cleanness are all pointing us to the Lord Jesus Christ. Once again, I'm going to be working through much of the material from Dr. James Dolezal. I think this has been a helpful way to organize some of these things. So I'm relying very heavily upon his notes as we work through this material this morning. But the Old Testament covenants provide a framework for understanding the mission of our Lord Jesus Christ, for understanding the work of Christ. I mentioned the covenant made with Adam and the promise that God gave to Adam even after the fall. But the covenant works that God made with Adam, do this and live, And of course, Adam didn't do that. He did not, he was sentenced to death, but that covenant of works was, in a sense, republished at Sinai. Sinai, the Mosaic covenant, the Sinaitic covenant, we can use those interchangeably, those were covenant of works. That was a covenant of works. And it sketches the pattern for how God intends his, we could say his son, Israel, His son Adam, and the Bible refers to both Adam and Israel as sons of God. This was the instruction of how God's sons ought to live. And both Adam and all of Israel rebelled against the commands of God. But they were both given a means of attaining eternal life, obedience to the full and complete moral law of God. And Adam and Israel after him broke covenant with God. Well, then we see the covenant expanded and carried forward. The covenant of Abraham is realized in and through Christ in a way that's not realized in the nation of Israel. Abraham was considered the father of the faith, the father of the faithful. And yet, as the New Testament unfolds, we see that Being circumcised, being outwardly a son of Abraham, didn't make you a true son of Abraham. The true sons of Abraham were sons by faith. Then, of course, as we trace this through further, the covenant with David. We see that being fulfilled in the word Jesus Christ in a way that it was never fulfilled by David. Did David live forever? No. Did David reign perfectly and always righteously? No. Did David's throne remain continuously ruling? No. It went to Solomon and the kingdom was split in that very next generation with Solomon's sons. And then finally, we have a new covenant that's prophesied by the prophets. And especially during the time of the exile, the emphasis of the Lord speaking to his prophets was that there would be a new covenant coming. Think about Jeremiah. In chapter 31, verse 31, where Jeremiah says, in the days to come, I will make for you a new covenant, not like the covenant that I made with your fathers when I brought them out of Egypt. So there's a new covenant. It is not just a new administration of the same old covenant. It is a new covenant, a new kind, new terms, new ordinances. This covenant's better than the covenant made at Sinai because it's unshakable. It is unbreakable for all those who are included in it. You can read through the book of Hebrews and get a sense of how much better this covenant is because it has better promises. It has a better mediator. Well, then we can also see So we look, first of all, at how Jesus Himself speaks of His mission there in Luke 24. We see how the Old Testament covenants progressively point us to a Redeemer who is to come. And then thirdly, the term itself that the Scriptures use for Jesus is Christ. And so that when Paul would testify to the Philippian church, for example, that after his humiliation, he was exalted and given a name above every name, that at the name of Jesus, every knee would bow and every tongue would confess that Jesus is what? Lord. So it's not at the name of Jesus that every name would bow. It's at the name of Lord, Kurios, which is the New Testament equivalent of Yahweh in the Old Testament. Jesus was given that exalted title. He earned that. And so there's a foreshadowing of Jesus' messianic mission. There's a foreshadowing of his status in those three great offices that we see in the Old Testament. What are the three offices that we see in the Old Testament? prophet, priest, and king. And we see Jesus fulfilling each of those three offices. I mean, think about in the Old Testament, who was considered some of the greatest of the prophets? Elijah, Jeremiah, Moses. Who was considered among the greatest priests? I'm sorry, Levi, Aaron, but even There's one that kind of stands out above them all, the writer of Hebrews refers to, Melchizedek, who had no beginning and no end, no origin. And then, of course, who's sort of the typical arch king in the Old Testament? It's David, right? And Jesus is the full fulfillment of all three of those offices. He is a far greater prophet than Moses, or Elijah, or Jeremiah, or any of the prophets. He is a far better priest than Melchizedek. He is like unto Melchizedek, but infinitely better. He is like unto David. He is the son of David, and yet David's Lord. He is the fulfillment of that. And so we see these terms fulfilled. in the person and the work of the Lord Jesus, He is the Christ that the Old Testament very clearly and frequently spoke about. There's another prominent Old Testament motif in the fourth place that prepares us to think about the mission of the Messiah, and that's the motif of the temple. The temple. Now, where is it that we first see this sort of language of a permanent, or not a permanent, but of a dwelling place for God. It's in the Exodus, right, in the wilderness where God commanded Moses to create a tabernacle. That was by definition, it was portable. In all of the design, as you read through, what can feel like almost excruciating details about how this tabernacle was to be constructed, but it was a place in which the ark of God would dwell. The very presence and promises of God symbolically dwelt in the ark, which dwelt in the tabernacle. And then, of course, we see during the time of David, David looks around and says, my God dwells in a tent. I dwell in a cedar house. I will build a house for the Lord." And of course, we see in 1 Samuel 7 that sort of wordplay where the Lord says, you want to build me a house, I'm going to build you a house. But David was thinking of a physical structure, and the Lord was thinking of a dynasty, a kingdom, a dominion. And so we see these motifs of the temple, the tabernacle. The temple was God's unique place of dwelling among His people in His very special manifested presence. Now in 1 John, the apostle John speaks about the Word who became flesh, who is the Christ. And the word that John uses is interesting. He says, He tabernacled among us. He tabernacled among us. It was more than He just was with us. He resided with us as a place of worship. He is the manifestation of divine glory. And so not only is Jesus the one whose glory is near us, but he also is the true tabernacle. And of course we see over and over again, and the writer of Hebrews makes much of this, that this is a tabernacle, this is a temple, not made with human hands. And so then when Jesus would stand before the temple, Pastor Brandon, I think it was yesterday, was speaking about this at family camp and speaking about the, here's the disciples standing near Herod's temple and observing the grandeur of this place. the sheer size of the temple, the sheer size of the individual stones, the precision, the craftsmanship, the glory of this edifice. And then Jesus says, I'm going to destroy the temple and raise it up again in three days. and their minds were blown. They couldn't comprehend that because they were thinking primarily in those physical terms, and Jesus was using that as an object lesson, saying, this physical temple, as beautiful and as impressive as it is, is merely a symbol. It's a signpost. It points us to a far greater reality, that God will actually tabernacle with men. in the person and the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. So, we have these various things in the Old Testament that are pointing us forward to the Messiah. But also, in addition to that temple, in addition to the priesthood, the whole ministry of sacrifices in the temple. all of the ordinances, all of the very detailed and specific provisions that God had made for His people to become clean, to have their sins atoned for. All of that shapes our understanding of Christ's mission because He was the fulfillment of everything. He is the one who provided for our cleansing. Again, the writer of Hebrews says, the blood of bulls and goats, that was commanded of God. It was holy. It was right for God's people to follow after Him in obeying those commands to make sacrifices. But the blood of bulls and goats never cleansed anyone from sin. it pointed them forward to the blood that would cleanse them from sin. In fact, cleanse even their consciences from dead works. Such was the efficacy and the power of the blood of Christ. And then, lastly, if you would turn with me to the book of Isaiah, starting in chapter 42. And I'm just going to give a sampling here. We're not going to read all of these. But the Old Testament prepares us for the mission of Christ by bringing forward to God's people several promises that God made to deliver His people, to rescue them. And these promises become increasingly prominent during the time of the exile, which I think is crucial for us to fully comprehend the extent the infinite measure of God's gracious, merciful provision for his people. The people of God had broken covenant with him over and over and over and over again. God had been warning them for generations that if you do not turn back to me, if you do not forsake the gods of the peoples around you, if you do not forsake your whoring after other gods, and God would use very intentionally abrasive, abrupt language like that. You're whoring after gods. And if you do not cease from that, I'm going to raise up your enemies to destroy you. And that's precisely what happened. and they were led into captivity in Babylon for 70 years. And it's during that exilic period, during that 70 years of exile, that there began to be an increasing measure, an increasing emphasis from the prophets about the future messianic work, about one who would restore them, an anointed one whom God would raise up to deliver his people, to cleanse them from their unrighteousness, to deal with their sin and their rebellion once and for all. In Isaiah 42, beginning in verse 1, listen to what God speaks or says through His prophet, "'Behold, My servant, whom I uphold, My chosen, in whom My soul delights, I have put My Spirit upon him. He will bring forth justice to the nations. He will not cry aloud or lift up his voice or make it heard in the street. A bruised reed he will not break, and a faintly burning wick. He will not quench. He will faithfully bring forth justice. He will not grow faint or be discouraged till He has established justice in the earth and the coastlands wait for His law. You see, the Lord through His prophet is promising that there is a chosen one. who will come. He hasn't come yet in the time of Isaiah, but He is to come. If you turn over to chapter 48, I'm just going to show you how this theme is traced through. Isaiah 48, verse 12, "'Listen to Me, O Jacob, and Israel whom I called.'" And see, those are covenant terms. When He says, "'Listen to Me, O Jacob,' He's not talking to one person. He's talking to his covenant people as a group, as a corporate body, as a corporate nation. Listen to me, O Jacob, and Israel, whom I called. I am he, I am the first, and I am the last. My hand laid the foundation of the earth, and my right hand spread out the heavens. When I call to them, they stand forth together. Assemble, all of you, and listen. Who among them has declared these things? The Lord loves him. He shall perform his purpose on Babylon, and his arm shall be against the Chaldeans. I, even I, have spoken and called him. I have brought him, and he will prosper in his way. Draw near to me, hear this. From the beginning I have not spoken in secret. From the time it came to be I have been there, and now the Lord God has sent me and his spirit. This is the voice of Christ speaking here. And said, this wasn't hidden. Now, to be clear, it was veiled, wasn't it? Under the light of the New Testament, under the light of Christ, under the light of the Holy Spirit, we have a greater understanding. But just as Jesus said to the disciples on the road to Emmaus, you should already have recognized these things. O foolish ones and slow to believe, How did you not understand that the Son of Man had to suffer? And I would encourage you to go back kind of in that light and read through Isaiah 52 and 53. I'm going to skip over that for now for the sake of time, but to encourage your soul with that, to go back and read Isaiah 52 and 53 and see how God had promised this. And he had reminded his people over and over and over again of his future provision for their sins. In Isaiah 61, Verse 1 to 3, the Spirit of the Lord God is upon me because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to captives and the opening of the prison to those who are bound, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, to grant to those who mourn in Zion, to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes. the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit, that they may be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he may be glorified. They shall build upon the ancient ruins, they shall raise up the former devastations, they shall repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations. You see, here's the voice of Christ again through the prophet Isaiah saying, I'm going to come and this is what I'm going to do. I am the chosen one. I am the anointed one. The Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. We see throughout the Old Testament that the prophets foretold the Messiah who would come. that the prophets from Moses all the way to the end of the Old Testament had put these things repeatedly before God's people. Now, they missed it, and often were told it was because of the hardness of their hearts. They were a stiff-necked, stubborn, and rebellious people. They didn't want to see the truth. Now, there's a temptation at that point to say, wow, how could they be so So stubborn. How could they be so hard-hearted? How could they be so stupid? God calls them stupid. How could that be? But then we consider ourselves, we have a far greater light than they. And yet, how often do we miss it? How often do we suppress that truth? I mean, how often do we ignore the very clear prophetic witness that God has given to us? And in our selfishness, in our sloth or laziness spiritually, in our zeal to make our own way, we set these things aside. We're gonna deal with that in the sermon today. As Jesus said, if you want to follow me, if you want to be my disciple, deny yourself. I mean, literally, disown yourself. Disavow yourself and follow me. This was the command in the old covenant as well. Set aside all your whorings after the peoples around you. Set aside your desire to be like the nations. Set aside your own sin and wickedness and follow after me. And now, under the light of the new covenant, we have greater promises, a greater mediator, a greater covenant, and a greater power through the Spirit of God to obey those things that we could not naturally, natively do. I'm gonna wrap up here. I think this is a good place to stop. Next time, We'll transition to think in terms of from the Old Covenant, from the Old Testament, and that witness in the Old Testament about Christ's mission. Let's transition next week to see what does Jesus Himself say about His mission through the course of His ministry. We've kind of peeked ahead a little bit with Luke 24 to see Him in His resurrected and glorified body explaining from Moses and all the prophets things concerning about Himself, things concerning Himself. but we're going to see through the whole ministry of Christ. It was there all along. It's kind of like we saw last week in Mark 8, and I think this is probably the recollection of Peter, the memory of Peter as a source for Mark, verse 32 of Mark 8, and he said this plainly. He began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed and after three days rise again. And he said this plainly. God didn't stutter. Whatever difficulties we have is not owning to the clarity with which God speaks to us. You know, in our marriages, in our homes, in our workplaces, we get sideways sometimes because communication wasn't clear. You know, an email wasn't clear, or a meeting didn't have clear action points, or even in a casual conversation between a husband and wife, and we've probably all had that experience. I didn't say that. Yes, you did. Or you didn't tell me that. Yes, I told you that four times. And we can, in our fallibility, we recognize I might have forgotten that. or I might have misunderstood that. But it is not so with God's speaking to his people. God has spoken plainly, spoken clearly, spoken repeatedly. May he give us the grace clearly to hear what he has clearly spoken so that we can rejoice in the deliverance that he's offered to us in Christ and understand a farther and deeper horizon of meaning that the Old Testament previews and predicts and foretells that is fulfilled in the Lord Jesus Christ. When he said, I've not come to undo the law, but to fulfill it. He says, in fact, I tell you the truth, not one jot, not one tittle, not one iota, not one dot of an I, not one cross of a T will be left undone. Everything will be fulfilled. And he has accomplished that. It's a good, I think, a good stopping place and a good transition to our passage this morning in Mark 8, as we wrap up that chapter. Any questions about the mission of Christ from the Old Testament? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I have a friend of mine, in fact, he's preached here once before, Jason Walter from Southern California, and we were talking one day, and he said, yeah, I just, he said, I almost prefer to preach the Old Testament. I love preaching the Old Testament. He said, if I could just preach Christ from the Old Testament all the time, I would love to do that. He said, no, I have preached the New Testament. I mean, I've preached Hebrews, and I've preached Revelation. I said, well, brother, that's still the Old Testament. It's the fully enlightened Old Testament. We were kind of tongue-in-cheek. Of course, that is the new revelation of God, but it is building upon. If you don't understand the Old Testament, how are you going to understand the book of Hebrews? If you don't understand the Old Testament, how are you going to understand the book of the Revelation? All these things go together. Even the book of Revelation, which dispensationalists love to write about and think about and spend time there, If you neglect the Old Testament, you're not going to understand that the pictures and images that we encounter in the book of the Revelation aren't new. These aren't just new random visions that John is having. These all have their roots in the way the prophets foretold. these very events. I do. I have a great deal of admiration for Dr. MacArthur. I'm thankful for his ministry. He was vital for me as a new believer, but I share that disappointment that the Old Testament was kind of neglected. In fact, when I got, before I became a Christian, my employer, of all things, issued me a John MacArthur study Bible on my first day of work, invited me to a Bible study, and it just puzzled me. I was so helpful by a study, I never had a study Bible, and it was so helpful. I could go to the book of Romans, for example, and read kind of an ongoing, some comments and things that were very helpful for my understanding, but then I would go to Elijah or Isaiah or Exodus, and there was just very little commentary. It was more geographical or historical. There wasn't any, not any, there was far less spiritual commentary, gospel commentary, and it never made sense to me. I never understood it, but I didn't have the tools yet to put that together. So Dr. Barcelos is a helpful guide on those things. Well, let's pray and we'll recess for worship. Father, we are grateful that You have made Yourself known to us and that You did not wait until the advent of Your Son to begin to explain to us how these things must be. We thank You that from the book of Genesis to the final benediction of Revelation that you have given to us a consistent, faithful, persevering witness of your mercy and your grace upon your people. We pray that you will give our minds understanding, that you will encourage our hearts with these things. that you will grant to us humility as we think about these things and to think charitably about our brothers and sisters who differ in their understanding of some of these things. We pray that you will create a unity among your people as a testimony of our love for you and of your work of grace within us. We thank you and we praise you in Christ, amen.