The Jewish people had spent centuries longing for the Messiah, yet when He arrived, many rejected Him for a reason that had nothing to do with Scripture. Jesus was from Nazareth, a region considered geographically and culturally insignificant, and that alone was enough for many to dismiss Him. This expectation did not come from the Bible. It came from the Mishnah, a collection of oral traditions and rabbinic teachings developed between the Old and New Testaments. By elevating human tradition above the Word of God, many missed the very One they had been waiting for.

The irony is that the Old Testament Scriptures, read carefully and honestly, pointed directly toward Jesus. Micah 5:2 prophesied a ruler born in Bethlehem, which is exactly where Jesus was born. Isaiah 11:1 spoke of a branch from the root of Jesse, and the Hebrew root behind the  ...