This is to fulfill the scriptures.

 

This is to fulfill the scriptures.

 

Mark 14:46-50『And they laid their hands on him, and took him. And one of them that stood by drew a sword, and smote a servant of the high priest, and cut off his ear. And Jesus answered and said unto them, Are ye come out, as against a thief, with swords and with staves to take me? I was daily with you in the temple teaching, and ye took me not: but the scriptures must be fulfilled. And they all forsook him, and he fled.』

“Fulfilling the Bible” means the fulfillment of the covenant in the Old Testament. In John 5:39, Jesus said, “Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me.』The Bible here is the Old Testament. The Old Testament is talking about Jesus Christ.

The covenant of the Bible is a promise between God and humans. God unilaterally entered into a covenant with humans and made them obey. However, because humans disobey, the old one is nullified, and God makes a new covenant with a new person.

The first person to enter into a covenant was Adam. God put Adam, who was born in the world, into the Garden of Eden and told him, “Do not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” But because Adam and Eve disobeyed, he was kicked out of the Garden of Eden. The result of disobedience was death. God sacrificed animals, made leather clothes, and clothed them. Adam and Eve, dressed in animal skins, enter into a covenant with God again. That new covenant is Genesis 3:15, “And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; It shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel her.』The woman's descendant refers to the future Christ.

God judges all those who do not enter into the covenant. A representative example is the great flood during the Noah era, which destroyed Noah and his family except for eight people. God revealed to them through the water judgment (water baptism) that all humans are beings who must die for their sins. And God made a new covenant through Noah. In

Genesis 9:9-13, “And I, behold, I establish my covenant with you, and with your seed after you; And with every living creature that is with you, of the fowl, of the cattle, and of every beast of the earth with you; from all that go out of the ark, to every beast of the earth. And I will establish my covenant with you, neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of a flood; neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth. And God said, This is the token of the covenant which I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for perpetual generations: I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth.』

This covenant foreshadows the future judgment by fire (baptism of fire). In 2 Peter 3:6-7, 『Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished: But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day God tells us that all humans in the world are beings who deserve to be judged by fire.

The third covenant is the covenant between God and Abraham. God appeared to Abraham and said, “Leave your country, your relatives, and your father’s house.” And he said that he would give him promised children and land in the future. So, with that covenant, in Genesis 15, when Abram kills animals and cuts them in half, God's fire passes through them. However, Abram failed to obey God's covenant and gave birth to Ishmael. After that, God did not appear for 13 years. And when Abram was 99 years old, God appeared to him and caused him to be circumcised, and the following year he again promised to give him the promised child.

Even when Abraham was 100 years old and his body was as if dead, he did not lose faith and believed in the child of promise, and that child was Isaac (a type of Christ). Circumcision symbolizes Jesus' death on the cross, and Isaac, the child of promise, symbolizes Christ's resurrection. This faith is the faith of Christ that leads to salvation. The faith of Christ is the faith that dies on the cross and is resurrected by God.

The next covenant is the covenant at Mount Sinai. Through Moses, God gave the Israelites two stone tablets with engraved laws to follow. However, when Moses received the two stone tablets, the people were making an idol of a golden calf and worshiping it. So Moses broke the stone tablets.

God made the first stone tablets himself and gave them to Moses, but Moses had to make the second tablets. This teaches believers that if a person who commits a crime repents, their sin will be forgiven and they will recover, but the aftereffects will remain.

The first and second stone tablets resemble the first and last man Adam. The first man, Adam, gave the body of sin, and the second man, Adam, gave the body of the spirit. Therefore, the second stone tablet is like a temple built in the hearts of believers.

The first stone tablet was broken (dead) and the second stone tablet was engraved (reborn) and placed in the Ark of the Covenant (in the temple of the saints' hearts).

The second tablet is the new law, those who are under the law of Christ. In 1 Corinthians 9:21, “To them that are without law, as without law, (being not without law to God, but under the law to Christ,) that I might gain them that are without law.”

Moses received the second stone tablets from God and began to lead the people toward Canaan. However, the Israelites refused to enter the land of Canaan that God had promised.

They sent spies into Canaan, but the passionate spies came back and said, “If we enter Canaan, we will all die.” All the people believed those words and wailed and wept. Only two people, Joshua and Caleb, believed in God's promise. So, God makes a new covenant so that only children under the age of 19 and new people born in the wilderness can enter Canaan. The New Covenant was the word of covenant that God gave Moses to the new people in the land of Moab, the entrance to Canaan. Canaan represents the kingdom of God and symbolizes the kingdom of God in the heart, that is, the resurrected Christ.

In Deuteronomy 29:1, “These are the words of the covenant, which the LORD commanded Moses to make with the children of Israel in the land of Moab, beside the covenant which he made with them in Horeb.”

So he even took an oath that God would make his people to those who obey him. The Israelites enter Canaan, defeat the seven tribes of Canaan, and receive the promised land as their inheritance. The resurrected saints in Christ also have physical selves called the seven tribes. That is why saints fight until death in their hearts.

In the middle of Israel's history, there were the Salt Covenant, the Priestly Covenant, and the Davidic Covenant, but the Bible tells the Israelites what they must keep. However, Israel failed to obey God's words and broke the covenant. Those things are mentioned in Jeremiah. In Jeremiah chapter 1, the people are invaded and dominated by foreign nations, and the people are taken away. The people were exiled to a foreign country, suffered hardships in Babylon, repented, and returned to the promised land.

So in Jeremiah 31:32-34, the words of the new covenant are spoken. 『Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they break, although I was an husband unto them, saith the LORD: But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people. And they shall teach no more every man his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, Know the LORD: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the LORD: for I will forgive their. iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.』

The Israelites returned to their homeland, rebuilt the temple, and kept their covenant with God, but later on, the people committed crimes against God again. They received the promise of the Messiah, but when Jesus came to this world as the Messiah, they had him crucified for blasphemy. However, this was to fulfill the covenants mentioned in the Bible.

In Matthew 20:28, Jesus said that he came to the world to provide a ransom for many people. The day before Jesus died on the cross, he said, “How I longed to eat the Passover meal.” The Passover lamb symbolizes Jesus. Through eating the Passover food, the intention was to explain the meaning of Jesus dying as a ransom.

In Luke 22:19-20, “And he took bread, and gave thanks, and brake it, and gave unto them, saying, This is my body which is given for you: this do in remembrance of me.” Likewise also the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood, which is shed for you.』 Jesus dying on the cross like this was to atone for the sins of all sinners in this world. So, if a believer is united in the death of Jesus, God will resurrect him with Christ. This covenant becomes the new covenant.

Jesus' disciples thought that Jesus was going to overthrow Rome and build a new kingdom, but because Jesus did not resist the soldiers and was captured, one of the disciples (Peter) hit the high priest's ear with a sword. From a human perspective, he is also a brave person. In Mark 14:50, it is said that all the remaining disciples ran away. However, instead of running away, Peter wanders around and denies Jesus three times before the rooster crows at dawn.

Even today, there is a divide between those who seek to fulfill the Bible and those who do not. There is a divide between those who die on the cross with Jesus and those who believe in atonement for their sins but watch the dead Jesus from afar. If a believer does not participate in the death of the cross, he cannot fulfill the Bible (covenant).