Sermons of John Newton - M - Booklet Eleven 24. Messiah’s Innocence Vindicated, 25. Messiah Rising from the Dead and 26. The Ascension of Messiah to Glor

Extract

Sermons of John Newton – Booklet Eleven

24. Messiah’s Innocence Vindicated,
25. Messiah Rising from the Dead and
26. The Ascension of Messiah to Glory
24. Messiah’s Innocence Vindicated “He was taken from prison and from judgment, and who shall declare his generation? For he was cut off out of the land of the living; for the transgression of my people was he stricken” Isaiah 53:8.

Let not plain Christians be stumbled because there are difficulties in the prophetical parts of the Scriptures, and because translators and expositors sometimes explain them with some difference, as to the sense. Whatever directly relates to our faith, practice, and comfort, may be plainly collected from innumerable passages, in which all the versions, and all sober expositors agreed. That there are some differences, will not appear strange, if we consider the antiquity of the Hebrew language, and that the Old Testament is the only book extant, which was written during the time that it was the common language of the people. For this reason we meet with many words which occur but once; and others, which do not occur frequently, are evidently used in more than one sense. If we suppose that a time should come, when the English language should be no longer spoken, and no more than a single volume in it be preserved, we may well conceive that posterity might differ, as to the sense of many expressions, notwithstanding the assistances they might obtain, by comparing the English with the French, Dutch, and other languages, which were in use at the same period. Such assistance, we derive from the Chaldee, Syriac, Greek, and other ancient versions of the Old Testament, sufficient to confirm us in the true sense of the whole, and to throw light upon many passages otherwise dark and dubious; and yet, there will remain a number of places, the sense of which, the best critics have not been able to fix with certainty. Farther, the prophecies are usually expressed in the style of poetry, …