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bitterest grief. We turned our backs on him and looked the other way when he went by. He was despised, and we did not care.
    Yet it was our weaknesses he carried; it was our sorrows that weighed him down. And we thought his troubles were a punishment from God for his own sins! But he was wounded and crushed for our sins . He was beaten that we might have peace. He was whipped , and we were healed! All of us have strayed away like sheep. We have left God’s paths to follow our own. Yet the Lord laid on him the guilt and sins of us all.
    He was oppressed and treated harshly, yet he never said a word. He was led as a lamb to the slaughter . And as a sheep is silent before the shearers, he did not open His mouth. From prison and trial they led him away to his death. But who among the people realized that he was dying for their sins — that he was suffering their punishment? (Isa. 53:2–8; NLT).
    Isaiah concluded this amazing description of a murdered Messiah with this shocking statement, “But it was the Lord ’s good plan to crush him and fill him with grief” (Isa. 53:10; NLT). There it is again. Seven centuries before Jesus came to this earth, Isaiah announced the Lord’s prearranged plan of salvation; to sacrifice a spotless lamb for the forgiveness of sins.
    The shadow is getting very clear.
    430 Years before Christ
    It is now two hundred years after Jeremiah announced a new covenant for the forgiveness of sins by a lamb-like Messiah. No Messiah has arrived yet. Where is He? Who is He? The very last book of the Old Testament ends like this, “Look, I am sending you the prophet Elijah before the great and dreadful day of the Lord arrives” (Mal. 4:5).
    That is how the Old Testament closes, and then . . . nothing.
    For four hundred years God did not send this promised prophet to reveal the Messiah. The Jews were left in the shadows and with their guilt. So they faithfully sacrificed lamb after lamb after lamb after lamb for the covering of their sins.
    Chapter Five — The Scarlet Thread in the New Testament

    Few of us have the patience for waiting. Imagine waiting four hundred years for someone. Okay, you would be dead, but that’s not the point.
    God promised the Jews a Messiah who would save people from their sins (Matt. 1:21), but that was hundreds of years ago. Where is this Promised One? What is taking so long?
    God’s bloody sacrificial system in the Old Testament provided for the covering of sins. But the sacrificing of lambs never removed guilt; it was only a shadowy picture of a better sacrifice to come; a sacrifice that would forgive sins.
    Year after year, lamb after lamb, the Jews shed blood for the covering of sins.
    30 Anno Domini (the Year of Our Lord)
    After four hundred years of complete silence and countless bloody sacrifices, God spoke. He sent an Elijah-type prophet named John the Baptist who pointed at Jesus Christ and announced,
    â€śBehold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29).
    After centuries of longing for a Messiah to deliver them from their sins, Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, appeared. Suddenly, the shadows of the Old Testament are revealed as pictures of Jesus Christ who came to this earth to be the perfect sacrifice for the complete forgiveness of sins.
    Just as the scarlet thread ran through the Old Testament, that same theme makes its way through the entire New Testament. Old Testament lambs were sacrificed repeatedly for the covering of sins. The better New Testament Lamb would be sacrificed one time for the forgiveness of sins.
    33 Anno Domini (the Year of Our Lord)
    For fifteen hundred years the Jews had been celebrating Passover by killing an unblemished male lamb and partaking in a Passover meal. Many foods would be eaten symbolically, like bitter herbs to remind them of their bitter sufferings under the Egyptians. They would also drink wine at four different times throughout the