Isaiah's Prophecy

Predictions about Jesus' vocation

• Announcer and servant
• As servant and messenger, he would bring about miracles, salvation and redemption
• His experience of rejection by his own people
• His experience of suffering injustices

How Jesus fulfilled them

• His occasional mention of the coming of the Kingdom of God
• The healing the blind, forgiving others of their sins
• Being despised and rejected by the chief priests, etc.
• His unfair accusal of inciting a rebellion

How these prophecies go against Israel's view

• The predicted servant would bring salvation, redemption, and glory through a revolution of arms
• Jesus, on the other hand, set about a revolution of love, healing, and forgiveness.

Daniel's Prophecy

Predictions about Jesus' vocation

• The relationship of the Ancient One and the Son of Man
• The Son of Man, representing the faithful, who would carry out the will of the Ancient One
• How the Son of Man would also be a rejected and vindicated "stone" that would cut through all the others
• The final victory against those who would speak against the Ancient One (the beasts)

How Jesus fulfilled them

• Jesus' (the Son of Man) relationship with God, the Father (the Ancient One)
• Jesus commonly referring to himself as the "Son of Man" and "stone"
• Jesus' proclaiming the coming of the Kingdom of God

How it wasn't fulfilled

• A hundred years after Jesus' time, Simon bar Kokhba was also seen as a "candidate" for the Son of Man
• The last part of the prophecy (with the beast with ten horns) has not yet been fulfilled
• Jesus referenced Daniel's prophecy not to fulfill it, but to provide the structure for his own teachings
• Like in Isaiah, Jesus did not end up focusing on destroying the pagans, but instead on redeeming the faithful

Zechariah's Prophecy

Predictions about Jesus' vocation

• Great future under the leadership of the Messiah
• The promise of cleansing from sin
• The coming of the king

How Jesus fulfilled them

• Jesus refusing to fast on certain occasions (fastings turning to feastings)
• Jesus, as servant and messenger, bringing about miracles, salvation and redemption
• His experience of rejection by his own people
• His experience of suffering injustices

If the hope of Israel is only one piece of the puzzle, why did Wright call the chapter "At the Heart of the Storm?"

The importance of the Jewish hope

The perfect storm building up from the political pressure of the Roman Empire the hope of the Israelites, and the divine purposes of God.

At the heart of it all is the "thousand-year hope" of the Israelites, or the Jewish hope

What makes it so important?

Political pressure from the Romans and the Jewish leaders, mixed with the prophecies laid down by Daniel, Isaiah, and Zechariah, ended up making the Jewish hope a crucial part of the storm

As Jesus did his ministry, the people who were still hoping for their saviour watched him closely, waiting for him to fulfill the prophecies

Jesus at the center of the storm

A lot of people in Jesus' time still waited for the Messiah to arrive, with the Roman rule intensifying that hope

Even if Jesus knew that he wouldn't end up being the kind of Messiah that people were expecting, he continued his ministry anyway.