Is Jesus The Messiah
TRANSCRIPT
NOTION OF MESSIAH
When Adam sinned, his innocence was lost, his eyes were opened, he brought a curse on himself and the earth, and he separated himself from a perfect relationship with God. Another man would be required to redeem the situation; an anointed man, a second Adam, a Messiah. This Messiah would be needing to atone for the sin of Adam and all who walk after him, reconcile the relationship between man and God, and restore all things from curse to blessing.
The notion of a Messiah in the Hebrew bible, which Christians naively named the Old Testament, was and is mainstream theological thinking. In fact, in Jesus’ day the Jews were expectant of a Messiah because of the many prophecies about this mysterious figure, including Daniels 70 weeks of years (ref. Dan 9:24-27), whose timeline would indicate this messiah to appear in their very lifetimes.
FALSE MESSIAHS
Many false Messiahs have come and gone throughout the centuries. From the likes of Bar Kochba who led a revolt against Rome founding a short-lived Jewish state in the 2nd century. Moses of Crete, who fatally led people into the sea in the 5th century. Sabbatai Zevi of the 17th century, an Ottoman Jew who claimed to be the Messiah, but then converted to Islam. Jacob Joseph Frank of the 18th century who claimed to be the reincarnation of King David. David Shayler (born 1965), former MI5 agent and whistle-blower who declared himself the Messiah on 07/07/2007. Even today people claim to be the Messiah or even the Jesus of the Bible who have secretly returned like Alan Miller in Australia. These and scores of others are not the Messiah the Bible speaks of.
PROMISED MESSIAH
Christians hold to the truth that Jesus of Nazareth spoken of in the bible is the Messiah. First off, he claims to be the Messiah:
A woman said “I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ)… Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he” (Jn 4:25-26). Many agreed. Andrew said to his brother Peter, ““We have found the Messiah” (which means Christ)” (Jn 1:40-41). “Philip found Nathanael and told him, “We have found the one Moses wrote about in the Law, and about whom the prophets also wrote —Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph”” (Jn 1:45).
PROPHESIES
So what evidence is there that Jesus of Nazareth was and is the Messiah? Prophesies throughout the bible detail who this Messiah would be, how he would live, where he was from, how he would die. For example, the Messiah would:
be born at Bethlehem (Mic 5:2), (Micah 5:1 in Hebrew Bible).
be born of a virgin (Isa 7:14).
be from the tribe of Judah (Gen 49:10).
come riding on a colt (Zec 9:9).
arrive before the destruction of the Second Temple (Dan 9:24-27).
perform miracles of healing (Isa 35:5-6).
be betrayed for 30 pieces of silver (Zec 11:13).
be tortured to death (Psalm 22:1-31).
marred beyond human semblance (Isa 52:14).
pierced through his hands and feet (Zec 12:10, Ps 22:16, Isa 53:5).
buried in a rich man’s tomb (Isa 53:8).
be silent at his arrest and trial (Isa 52:13-53:12).
resurrected to life from death (Ps 16:10, Ps 22).
bring good news to the poor… to proclaim liberty to the captives (Isa 61:1-2).
be called God’s son (Ps 2:1-12).
be the rejected cornerstone (Ps 118:22-24).
Nearly 300 references to 61 specific prophecies. Only Jesus fulfils these all the prophesies of the Messiah. It’s not as if anyone could attempt to fulfil these things through their own will. You couldn’t control where you are born, or how you will die. It’s been calculated that the probability of one man fulfilling just eight of these prophecies together is 1 to the 21st power, or 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.
CHARACTER
Jesus has as stainless character. They had nothing on him. Even today not many people have anything bad to say about his character. He lived by the Law of Moses. Peter said, “In him there was no deceit” (1 Pet 2:22). When you are put under pressure, that is when you find out what someone’s character is like. On the cross in utter agony, Jesus said about the people who were doing it to him, “Father, forgive them. They don't know what they're doing” (Luke 23:34).
WHAT HE SAID
Even the officers did a U-turn when commanded to bring Jesus to chief priests and Pharisees, they declared, “No one ever spoke like this man!” (Jn 7:45). Jesus’ phraseology of “I am”, “I say”, “I will” is unlike any other person in history. Here’s a few “I am’s”: “I am the bread of life” (Jn 6.35); “I am the light of the world” (Jn 8:12); “I am the door of the sheep” (John 10:7); “I am the good shepherd” (Jn 10:11); “I am the resurrection and the life” (Jn 11:25); “I am the way the truth and the life” (Jn 14:6); “I am the true vine” (Jn 15:1). If one of my friends said, “I am the true vine”, I’d suggest they’ve been smoking something similar. Yet his company said, “yes you are”. And yet he wasn’t known for ego, but rather his meekness. There was no pride of learning or show of scholarship, yet a divine royalty about the dogmatism of Jesus.
RESURRECTION
Unlike Kochba, Zevi, Frank and every other false Messiah of the past, they have died but Jesus resurrected to life. How do you explain it? A tomb with a huge stone rolled over it with a roman seal and guards watching over it. The Romans wanted to make sure no rumours started about Jesus. Did they just hide the body somewhere else? Why didn’t they just produce the body then to prove he wasn’t alive? The apostles went to torturous deaths to say they saw him resurrected. If they had somehow stole the body themselves surely one would tell them it’s buried in their back yard.
APPEARANCES
Over 500 people (ref. 1 Cor 15:6), on 11 different occasions saw him alive after his crucifixion. Were they all having the same hallucination? Impossible. After 40 days with them they witnessed his ascension into the clouds away to heaven. Jesus said, “Touch me and see… flesh and bones, as you see I have” (Luke 24:39). He walked, talked and eat with them. If it wasn’t the resurrection, what was it that started the explosion of Christianity across the globe.
WHAT HE DID
Unlike Shayler or Miller or any other self-titled Messiah today – Jesus did miracles for everyone to see. The crowds said, “When the Christ appears, will he do more signs than this man has done?” (Jn 7:31). He commanded the wind and waves, raised the dead, healed the sick, cast of demons, and forgave sins as only God would.
John penned, “Now there are also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written” (Jn 21:25).
NATURE – THE SON OF GOD
Nathanael said to Jesus, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” (Jn 1:49). He was the Son of God. He spoke and acted as though he knew nature, and people, and angels and demons, and the mysteries of life and the universe. He predicted his own death and resurrection. He said, “before Abraham was, I am” (Jn 8:58), and “I and the father are one” (Jn 10:30). John said “I have seen and have borne witness that this is the Son of God” (Jn 1:34). And when peter said “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God”, Jesus affirmed, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven (Mat 16:16-17). “You are from below; I am from above. You are of this world; I am not of this world” (Jn 8:23) Jesus avowed.
“…the high priest said to him, “I adjure you by the living God, tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God.” Jesus said to him, “You have said so. But I tell you, from now on you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power and coming on the clouds of heaven” (Mat 26:63-64). Here Jesus is citing Daniel 7, declaring himself to be not just the Son of God but also the Son of Man who comes on “the clouds of heaven” and “peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed” (Dan 7:13-14).
NATURE – THE SON OF MAN
He claimed to be the Son of God and the Son of Man. He had two natures, divine and human, conjoined in one person.
“…though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Phil 2:6-8).
In the Law of Moses (Lev 25:25-26, 48-49) when a man became poor and in debt, the next of kin – related by blood – could redeem that person. Jesus the Son of God became the Son of Man, that is God incarnate – taking on a bodily fleshly form, so that he could be related to us “by blood”. In doing so he could function as our Kinsman-Redeemer and rescue us from our debt of sins. Jesus paid our debt by taking our place on death row, and bearing our sin on the cross.
THE MESSIAH IS JESUS OF NAZARETH
Christians proclaim the New Testament scriptures as revealing the Messiah to be Jesus of Nazareth. He was prophet, priest and King all in one. The Son of God, fully God. The Son of Man, fully human.
Why didn’t the majority of Jews accept Jesus as their Messiah? They couldn’t see the two-peak prophecy. They couldn’t see the mystery of the two comings of Messiah with two millennia separating them. Paul reveals, “a partial hardening has come upon Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in” (Rom 11:25). Until is the key word here. Then one day soon they will know Jesus as their Messiah and King, as He speaks through the prophet Zechariah, when “they look on me, on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly over him, as one weeps over a firstborn” (Zec 12:10).
Then Messiah Jesus of Nazareth will establish his Kingdom and reign as their King, along with all who have faith in his name.