“They Testify Of Me”

     "A wise son maketh a glad father" (Proverbs 10:1).  The Lord Jesus Christ perfectly fulfilled Solomon's declaration - "This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased" - as He does every Old and New Testament affirmation of human devotion to God and His Truth (Matthew 3:17).  

    "There was delivered unto Him the book of the prophet Isaiah.  And when He had opened the book, He found the place where it was written, The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He hath anointed Me to preach the Gospel to the poor.  He hath sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord.  And He closed the book, and gave it again to the minister… and He began to say unto them, This day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears" (Luke 4:18-21).

    The Old Testament foreshadows the New; the New fulfills the Old.  Both center upon the person and work of the Lord Jesus, the beloved Son in whom God's eternal purposes originate and forever continue (Ephesians 1:10).  We never discover the Savior's name in the first Testament, even as Agur asked in Proverb 30:4:  "What is His name, and what is His Son's name?"  In the New Testament, conversely, we learn that "His name was called Jesus," and that "God hath given Him a name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow" (Luke 2:21; Philippians 2:9).  Moreover, God explicitly proclaims the centrality of His Son: "He is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He might have the preeminence" (Colossians 1:21).  Thus, we open the Scriptures to seek the Lord Jesus, in the shadows of the Old Testament, and the direct sunlight of the New.  "Search the Scriptures, for in them ye think ye have eternal life, and they are they which testify of Me" (John 5:39).

    "In Thy light shall we see light" (Psalm 36:9).  The written Word, the Bible, proclaims and illuminates the living Word, the Lord Jesus.  We open the holy page to seek the holy Person.  We own our Bibles that Christ may own our hearts.  All we need to know of God, of ourselves, and of people shines forth in the face of our Savior, as revealed in the facts of Scripture.  This day offers such opportunity as an open Bible, read with a Christ-seeking heart, promises discovery, confirmation, and growth in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus.  The written Word and the living Word, the Scriptures and the Savior, await us as we rejoice in the wise Son who made a glad Father, and who makes for us so wondrous a Redeemer.

"This is My beloved Son.  Hear Him."

(Mark 9:7)

"I rejoice at Thy word, as one that findeth great spoil… "Grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God, and of Jesus our Lord, according as His divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness."

(II Peter 1:2-3)

Weekly Memory Verse

    If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.

(Galatians 5:25)