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This verse is taken from:
John 5. 31-47
“search the scriptures” John 5:39
THEY ARE THEY WHICH TESTIFY OF ME
To a crowd of angry and unbelieving Jews, the Lord Jesus had just publicly equated Himself with Deity. Already angered because He had healed a crippled man on the Sabbath day, they sought Him out to persecute Him and to kill Him. His simple statement infuriated them all the more: ‘My Father is working until now, and I am working’, v. 17 ESV. Stating that God was His Father was making Himself equal with God, and, added to His apparent breaking of the Sabbath, meant they wanted Him dead. John records several times that ‘his hour was not yet come’ and this was one of those times.
In verse 39 the Lord Jesus challenged them as to how they viewed the Old Testament. They mistakenly thought that their adherence to the letter of the law was their ticket to righteousness; instead Jesus plainly told them that the scriptures were written to bear witness to Him. These Jews refused to accept the essential truths of what they had made the core of their now empty religion.
As believers in this day of grace, we can learn an important lesson from this exchange. How much time do we spend in the study and meditation of the Old Testament scriptures? Granted, some are difficult to understand; they seem obscure, and perhaps not as relevant to our Christian walk as the New Testament scriptures are. But, who of us would not have wanted to have been on the road to Emmaus that resurrection morning when the Lord Jesus Himself opened up the Old Testament to the two grieving disciples in a way they had never fully grasped before? ‘Beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself’, Luke 24. 27 ESV. We are reminded by Peter that holy men of God wrote these scriptures as they were borne along by the Holy Spirit, 2 Pet. 1. 21. They claimed to trust in Moses and boasted in their keeping of the law, but the Lord Himself said of Moses, ‘he wrote of me’, John 5. 46.
As we read the Old Testament may we seek to see Christ in every page.
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