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In this lesson we will continue to see the prophecies in the Old Testament concerning Christ’s death and burial.
There are many prophecies in Psalms 22, 34, 40, and 69 concerning Christ’s death. In these psalms, David the psalmist typifies the suffering Christ. What he spoke became prophecies concerning Christ’s crucifixion and the condition of Christ’s suffering in His crucifixion.
Psalm 22:9 prophesies that while He was suffering, Christ still trusted in God: “You are the One who drew me forth from the womb, / Who made me trust while at my mother’s breasts.” This indicates that Christ trusted that God would deliver Him. When people were mocking Him and deriding Him, He was trusting in God, because He had trusted in God even while He was at His mother’s breasts. Even though He intended to die, He trusted in God continually, believing that God would deliver Him, that is, cause Him to be resurrected from the dead.
Psalm 22:6-8 prophesies that Christ was reproached of men and despised by the people. All who saw Him derided Him, sneered at Him, shook their heads, saying, “He committed himself to Jehovah; let Him rescue him; / Let Him deliver him since He takes pleasure in him.” To reproach is to shame, to despise is to look down on with contempt and scorn, to deride is to make fun of or laugh at in contempt, and to sneer is to smile or laugh at with facial contortions that express scorn or contempt. After being questioned by Pilate, the Lord was further made fun of by the Roman soldiers: “They wove a crown of thorns and placed it on His head and put a reed in His right hand; and they kneeled before Him and mocked Him, saying, Rejoice, King of the Jews! And they spat on Him and took the reed and beat Him on the head” (Matt. 27:27-30; Mark 15:16-19). When Christ was being crucified, those who were passing by blasphemed Him, wagging their heads and saying, “Save Yourself! If You are the Son of God, come down from the cross!” Likewise, the chief priests with the scribes and elders mocked Him and said, “He saved others; Himself He cannot save...He trusts in God; let Him rescue Him now if He wants Him” (Matt 27:39-43). The rulers also sneered at Him this way (Luke 23:35). All these events accurately fulfilled the prophecy in Psalm 22:6-8. Hebrews 13:13 says, “Let us therefore go forth unto Him outside the camp, bearing His reproach.” Reproach here refers to the reproach in Psalm 22:6. This indicates that the New Testament believers need to go outside the camp of religion to follow the suffering Jesus and bear His reproach.
Psalm 22:12-18 continues to prophesy concerning how Christ passed through the suffering of crucifixion.
While Christ was being crucified on the cross, many fierce men, like the mighty bulls of Bashan, encompassed Him (v. 12). They opened their mouth at Him like a ravening and roaring lion (v. 13). Evil men, a congregation of evildoers signified by dogs, surrounded and enclosed Him (v. 16).
Psalm 22:16 also says, “They pierce my hands and feet.” Zechariah 12:10 prophesies concerning Christ as the One “whom they have pierced.” The fulfillment of these prophecies is found in the New Testament in John 19:34 (cf. v. 37). Christ’s two hands and two feet were nailed to the cross, and His side was pierced with a spear by one of the Roman soldiers who executed Him and “immediately there came out blood and water” (v. 34). John indicates in verse 37 that this fulfilled Zechariah’s prophecy: “They will look upon Me, whom they have pierced” (Zech. 12:10). Two substances came out of the Lord’s pierced side: blood and water. Blood is for redemption, to deal with sins (John 1:29; Heb. 9:22) for the purchasing of the church (Acts 20:28). Water is for imparting life, to deal with death (John 12:24; 3:14-15) for the producing of the church (Eph. 5:29-30). This picture shows that the Lord’s death, on the negative side, takes away our sins and, on the positive side, imparts life into us. His death is not only for terminating the old creation and redeeming sinners from death, but even more, it is for imparting life and producing the new creation.
Psalm 22:18 says that they divided His garments to themselves, and for His clothing they cast lots (John 19:23-24). In His crucifixion, the Lord’s right to be clothed was stripped from Him, along with His life. They made the Lord Jesus altogether naked in order to have a public, shameful display.
On the cross Christ was poured out like water (Psa. 22:14a). This is the pouring out of His soul, His life (Isa. 53:12). All His bones were out of joint, because He could not hold up the weight of His body as it hung on the cross (Psa. 22:14b). This caused Him great agony and pain. His heart was like wax melted within Him (v. 14c-d), His strength was dried up like a shard, and His tongue was stuck to His jaws (22:15a-b; John 19:28). Finally, God put Him into death, that is, put Him in the dust of death (Psa. 22:15c). Jesus’ dying was God’s putting Him into death. If Jesus had been killed only by man, He could never have been our Redeemer. He would merely have been a martyr. But God judged Him and put Him into death for our redemption (Isa. 53:4, 10a).
In Psalm 69:21 David says, “They gave me gall for my food, / And for my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.” This prophesies that man gave gall and vinegar to Christ on the cross (Matt. 27:34; John 19:28-30). According to Matthew and Mark, wine mingled with gall was offered to the Lord before crucifixion, but when He tasted it, He would not drink (Matt. 27:34). The wine mingled with gall also had myrrh (Mark 15:23), and it was used as a stupefying drink. Even though the Lord knew that He was going to suffer great pain on the cross, He would not be stupefied; rather, He would drink the bitter cup to the dregs. John 19:28-29 says, “Jesus, knowing that all things had now been finished and so that the Scripture might be fulfilled, said, I thirst. There was lying there a vessel full of vinegar; therefore, they put a sponge full of vinegar on hyssop and brought it to His mouth.” Thirst is a taste of death (Luke 16:24; Rev. 21:8). The Lord thirsted on the cross, which means that He tasted death on our behalf and on behalf of everything (Heb. 2:9). Even though He thirsted, man gave Him vinegar to mock Him (Mark 15:36). After Jesus “had taken the vinegar, He said, It is finished! And He bowed His head and delivered up His spirit” (John 19:30).
Psalm 22:1 prophesied that Christ was forsaken by God. At the end of His crucifixion, Christ cried out, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Matt. 27:46). Christ was on the cross for six hours, from the third hour, 9:00 A.M., until the ninth hour, 3:00 P.M. In the first three hours He was persecuted by men for doing God’s will; in the last three hours He was judged by God to accomplish our redemption. During the last three hours, God counted Him as our Substitute, who suffered for our sin (Isa. 53:10). While He was on the earth, the Father was with Him all the time (John 8:29), but at the end of His crucifixion, God left Him economically. Essentially, God could never leave Him, because He and the Father are one (10:30). But economically, God caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him (Isa. 53:6), making Christ the righteous One, the Substitute for the unrighteous. God considered Christ an offering for sin, making Him sin on our behalf (v. 10; 2 Cor. 5:21) and judging Him. Hence, God economically left Him temporarily so that man’s sin and sins and all negative things could be dealt with on the cross.
In Psalm 34:20 David says, “He keeps all his bones; / Not one of them is broken.” This prophesied that when Christ was crucified, His legs would not be broken (John 19:33, 36). The day Christ was crucified was the day of preparation for the Passover, and the next day (beginning at six o’clock in the evening) was the Sabbath (v. 14; Luke 23:54). The Jews, not wanting the bodies to remain on the cross on the Sabbath, asked Pilate that the legs of Jesus and the other two crucified with Him be broken to hasten their death (John 19:31). But when the soldiers came to Jesus, they saw that He had already died, so they did not break His legs (v. 33). Under God’s sovereignty not one of the Lord’s bones was broken. This fulfilled both the type of the lamb of the passover in Exodus 12:46 and the prophecy in Psalm 34:20. The death of Christ was not due to the soldiers breaking His legs. This indicates that even though Christ was crucified, He Himself was willing to die and give up His life. This fulfilled what Christ had said to the disciples concerning His life: “No one takes it away from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it again” (John 10:18). He gave up His life in order to redeem sinners. Furthermore, in the Bible bone signifies life (cf. Gen. 2:21-22). The fact that Christ’s legs were not broken indicates that in Him is an unbreakable and indestructible eternal life.
Psalm 40:6-8 says, “You do not delight in sacrifice and offering; / You have prepared ears for Me; / You do not require burnt offering and sin offering. / Then I said, / Behold, I have come; / In the scroll of the book / It is written concerning Me. / I delight in doing Your will, O My God; / Indeed Your law is within My inward parts.” This is a prophecy concerning Christ’s doing God’s will by being the sacrifice that satisfies God and man. Hebrews 10:5-8 refers to the fulfillment of this prophecy. Verse 5 says, “Coming into the world, He says, ‘Sacrifice and offering You did not desire, but a body You have prepared for Me.’” All the offerings sacrificed according to the law are shadows of Christ. In the fullness of time Christ came to replace the animal sacrifices of the law by putting on flesh and blood. In His flesh He offered Himself to God once for all and put away sin (9:26). Hebrews 10:9-10 says that the will of God was to take away the first, the animal sacrifices of the old covenant, that the second, the sacrifice of Christ of the new testament, might be established. Christ is the real sin offering that has taken away sin. He sanctified us by offering His body once for all.
The Triune God determined in His divine plan in eternity past that the second of the Divine Trinity would be incarnated and die on the cross to accomplish His eternal redemption for the fulfillment of His eternal purpose (Eph. 1:7-9). Hence, before the foundation of the world, that is, in eternity past (1 Pet. 1:19-20), the second of the Divine Trinity was ordained to be the Lamb of God (John 1:29); and in the eyes of God He was slain as the Lamb of God from the foundation of the world, that is, from the creation of God’s creatures, who became fallen (Rev. 13:8). From the time of man’s fall, lambs, sheep, calves, and bulls were used as types for God’s chosen people (Gen. 3:21; 4:4; 8:20; 22:13; Exo. 12:3-8; Lev. 1:2), pointing to Him who was to come as the real Lamb foreordained by God. In the fullness of time the Triune God sent the second of the Divine Trinity, the Son of God, to come in incarnation to take a human body (Heb. 10:5) that He might be offered to God on the cross (9:14; 10:12) to do the will of the Triune God (v. 7), that is, to replace the sacrifices and offerings, which were types, with Himself in His humanity as the unique sacrifice and offering for the sanctification of God’s chosen people (vv. 9-10).
The prophecies in Isaiah concerning Christ’s death and burial are seen mainly in chapter 53. The emphasis of the prophecies in this chapter is that the Savior Christ died a vicarious death.
Isaiah 53:4-5 says, “Surely He has borne our sicknesses, / And carried our sorrows; /...But He was wounded because of our transgressions; / He was crushed because of our iniquities; / The chastening for our peace was upon Him, / And by His stripes we have been healed.” This prophecy says that in His vicarious death, Christ bore our sicknesses and carried our sorrows (Matt. 8:17). In this portion of the Scriptures, sicknesses and sorrows are mentioned with iniquities and transgressions. This means that man’s sicknesses and sorrows come from sin. Because man committed sins, sicknesses and sorrows were produced; thus, we need Christ’s redemption to solve the problems of our iniquities and transgressions. When Christ was on the cross being judged by God, who put all iniquities upon Him, He took away the sin of the world (John 1:29) and also bore our sicknesses and sorrows. The stripes He received also were a suffering that resulted in death. Because of the chastening that He suffered, we have peace; because of the stripes He received, which resulted in death, we have been healed from death that we might live in resurrection (1 Pet. 2:24b).
Isaiah 53:7 prophesied, “He was oppressed, and it was He who was afflicted, / Yet He did not open His mouth; / Like a lamb that is led to the slaughter / And like a sheep that is dumb before its shearers, / So He did not open His mouth.” According to Matthew, on the night in which Christ was betrayed, some from the chief priests and elders of the people came to seize Him and bind Him so as to deliver Him to Pilate. This was His being oppressed. While He was being judged before the Sanhedrin, people spat on Him and mocked Him. These were His afflictions. “The high priest stood up and said to Him, Do You answer nothing? What is it that these testify against You? But Jesus remained silent” (26:62-63a). He could have shut the mouths of the false accusers (cf. 22:22, 34, 46), but He did not argue, vindicate Himself, or justify Himself. Before the Sanhedrin, as a sheep being sheared before the shearers, He did not say one word for self-vindication. His intention was not to save Himself but to save us.
At the time, those who were with Him by His side did not realize that He was dying for them, just as it was prophesied in Isaiah 53:8: “As for His generation, who among them had the thought / That He was cut off out of the land of the living / For the transgression of my people to whom the stroke was due?” Even some “esteemed Him stricken, / Smitten of God and afflicted” (v. 4b). His oppression, suffering, and persecution were all for us. He died a vicarious death.
The last part of Isaiah 53:12 prophesies that He would be “numbered with the transgressors.” This prophecy was fulfilled in Luke 23:33, which says, “When they [the soldiers] came to the place called The Skull, there they crucified Him and the criminals, one on the right and one on the left.” Christ was executed with two criminals. This fact indicates that the Roman ruler considered Him to be a criminal. This was done under the sovereignty of God so that the prophecy in Isaiah concerning Christ’s execution might be fulfilled.
Isaiah also prophesies that Christ “bore the sin of many / And interceded for the transgressors” (53:12b). This was fulfilled in Luke 23:34, which says, “Jesus said, Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (v. 34). While on the cross, Christ interceded not only for the transgressors who were beside Him, one of whom confessed and repented immediately (vv. 40-42), but also for those who were killing Him, asking the Father to forgive them for their sins committed in ignorance.
Isaiah 53:6b prophesied, “Jehovah has caused the iniquity of us all / To fall on Him.” The second half of verses 11 and 12 also prophesy that Christ would bear the iniquities of many. After God caused our iniquities to fall on the crucified Christ, God considered Him the unique sinner, even sin itself. According to 2 Corinthians 5:21, God made Christ, who did not know sin, to be sin on our behalf. In the fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecies, Christ not only died as our Substitute bearing our iniquities; He was also made sin on our behalf and was judged by God once for all.
The first half of Isaiah 53:10 says, “Jehovah was pleased to crush Him, to afflict Him with grief. / ...He makes Himself an offering for sin.” People think that it was either men or Satan who killed the Lord; actually, it was God who was pleased to crush Him, to put Him on the cross. God “loved us and sent His Son as a propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10). He makes Himself an offering for sin in Hebrew has the sense of “when His soul would make an offering for sin.” This implies that Christ volunteered to be an offering for sin. This does not refer to a sin offering but to an offering for sin in its totality—for wrongdoings, mistakes, trespasses, transgressions, evildoings, and iniquities. Isaiah 53:12b prophesies that Christ “poured out His life unto death.” Christ on the cross suffered and poured out His human life to be an offering. Philippians 2:8 says that Christ became “obedient even unto death, and that the death of a cross.”
Every offering, if it is a sacrifice, must be killed, and the blood must be poured out. Christ volunteered to be an offering for sin. For this He poured out His life unto death. Christ died for our wrongdoings, mistakes, trespasses, transgressions, evildoings, and iniquities; thus, His death is altogether a vicarious death.
Although Christ had done no violence, nor was there any deceit in His mouth, He was crucified and was assigned by man a grave with the wicked, but in God’s sovereignty, He was “with a rich man in His death” (Isa. 53:9; Matt. 27:57-60). While the Lord Jesus was dying on the cross, many evil things and sufferings came to Him. Some people treated Him evilly, and others mocked Him. Everything in His environment was dark. Despite the evil events and His considerable suffering, Christ endured them all and passed through them victoriously. After the Lord’s death, His situation immediately changed from suffering to honor. Joseph, an honorable member of the Council and a rich man of Arimathea, went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Moreover, Nicodemus, a Jewish ruler (John 3:1), brought mixed spices of myrrh and aloes. These two prepared the Lord’s body for burial (19:38-40; Mark 15:43; Matt. 27:57-58). Then, as in Isaiah’s prophecy, Christ was buried in the new tomb of the rich man, Joseph of Arimathea (John 19:41; Matt. 27:59-60).
Christ was put to death in shame, but He was buried in honor and rested in human honor. According to God’s sovereignty, He rested in the highest standard of human honor, waiting for the time to resurrect from among the dead.
There are many prophecies in Psalms 22, 34, 40, and 69 concerning Christ’s death. He was reproached by men and despised by people. All who saw Him derided Him, sneered at Him, and shook their heads. Even though Christ suffered, He still trusted in God, because He had trust in God even while He was at His mother’s breasts. While He was being crucified, fierce men encompassed Him. They opened their mouth at Him like a ravening and roaring lion. Evil men, as a congregation of evildoers, surrounded and enclosed Him like dogs. They divided His garments to themselves, and for His clothing they cast lots. On the cross Christ was poured out like water, all His bones were out of joint, His heart melted like wax, His strength was dried up like a shard, and His tongue was stuck to His jaws. On the cross Christ’s hands, feet, and side were pierced. Blood and water came out of His pierced side to take away sins on the negative side and to dispense life on the positive side. God caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Christ, making Him the Substitute for unrighteous sinners. God considered Christ an offering for sin, making Him sin on our behalf and judging Him. Christ would not be stupefied; rather, He drank the bitter cup to the dregs. Moreover, not one of His bones was broken. This indicates that in Christ is an unbreakable and indestructible eternal life that can be dispensed into His believers. By being the sacrifice that satisfies God and man, Christ in His flesh offered Himself to God once for all and put away sin, thereby doing the will of God.
Isaiah 53 prophesied concerning Christ’s vicarious death and His burial. Christ bore our sicknesses and carried our sorrows, was wounded because of our transgressions, and was crushed because of our iniquities. The chastening for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we have been healed. Christ was oppressed and afflicted, but He did not open His mouth. Like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that is dumb before its shearers, He did not open His mouth. Those who were with Jesus did not realize His vicarious death; they esteemed Him stricken, smitten of God and afflicted. However, His oppression, suffering, and persecution were for us. He died a vicarious death. Christ was numbered with the transgressors, but He alone bore the sin of many. While on the cross, Christ interceded not only for the transgressors who were beside Him, one of whom confessed and repented immediately, but also for those who were killing Him, asking the Father to forgive them for their sins committed in ignorance. Christ had done no violence nor was there any deceit in His mouth, but He was crucified and was assigned by man a grave with the wicked. But in God’s sovereignty, He was with a rich man in His death. He rested in the highest standard of human honor, waiting for resurrection. He died because Jehovah was pleased to crush Him and make Him an offering for sin. Christ poured out His human life as an offering by passing through death and shedding His blood. His death was altogether a vicarious death.
