How Did People Know Jesus Was Coming?

For a thousand years, God's people had been waiting on a promised Messiah, a person God would send to make things right, restore order, and bring peace to life. At the time of the New Testament the Messianic zeal in Israel had reached a fervor, as people looked from one person to the next, what gave the Jewish people this expectation? The answer is that their own prophets gave predictions that God would send a person who would rescue them and bring them peace. The Old Testament contains over 300 prophetic references alluding to 61 specific events or activities that would be done by the coming Messiah. People were looking for the one promised in the Scriptures. The crazy thing is that when He showed up, the Jewish people missed him. In our text today, Jesus curses a fig tree, confronts merchants in the Temple, and is confronted by the religious leaders. Each of these should raise the question for us, "Why didn't they believe?" This is the same question we had better ask ourselves.