Jesus, Our Messiah, In The Old Testament
JESUS, OUR MESSIAH, IN THE OLD TESTAMENT
We who live day-by-day and minute-by-minute bound by time; often find it hard to comprehend how God lives in eternity. While we live from day-to-day with more deadlines than we can deal with; He purposefully lives in eternity to show forth His glory and invites us into His loving, His welcoming, His redeeming Presence. He does this in the person of Jesus Christ, the Son, our Messiah. This is God’s eternal Gospel plan. So, for us, we start in the beginning, in the Old Testament. There we find a constant declaration of God’s Love expressed in Jesus.
Yes, it is the zeal of God who will accomplish this, the Prophet Isaiah proclaims. He will come as a child, as a son. Even so, the government of God’s Kingdom will weigh upon His shoulders. He will be given mighty names: Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. From the time of His coming there will be no end to His Kingdom’s growth. He personally will establish it and uphold it with justice and righteousness forever.
Though Jesus comes to us as God Incarnate, God-in-the-flesh; He will be unique. He will be born of a virgin, unlike any other person in the history of our world. By God’s divine will, and by the virgin Mary’s willing obedience, Jesus comes as the one and only one like Himself. Still, in life He chooses hunger, thirst, pain, heat, cold, dirt, hard ground, sweat, difficult work, and eventually death. He endures the longest of days. He patiently teaches God’s Truth over and over again. He makes His life an open book, the Gospel to be clearly read in His actions and through His Words. Then He willingly lays down His life to open the door to faith which becomes His free gift of salvation to each of us who choose to believe and to entrust our very lives to Him.
God declares Himself the Father of the coming Messiah. All that Jesus is and all that He does among us has arisen from the eternal gospel plan of the Godhead, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit acting as One. God acknowledges this overpowering truth when Jesus begins His ministry, submitting to the rite of Baptism at the hand of John the Baptist. The Holy Spirit descends on Jesus like a dove. “And when was baptized, immediately he went up from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened to him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him.” (Matthew 3:16) God says, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” (Matthew 3:17) Here is an open declaration that Jesus is the Messiah, the one and only Son of God, who has always been and who will always be One with the Father and the Spirit.
The prophet Micah had the privilege of announcing the birthplace of the coming Messiah in Bethlehem, where King David had also been born. See how comprehensively God arranges for the King whose dynasty provides the lineage for the Messiah to share his humble birthplace with the Messiah. Humility befits God’s eternal Gospel plan when the Mighty One comes as the little one, whose life is immediately both precious and precarious. How fitting that the One True King Above All Kings should be born during the reign of a false and fickle, a diabolical and an unholy, wholly political king.
The prophet Zechariah declares the joy the crowds will demonstrate as Jesus rides on a donkey, a colt into Jerusalem. Though most of Jerusalem does not recognize Him, Scripture clearly points to Him as God’s promised Messiah. We recall the nature of God’s heart displayed as Jesus pauses while He weeps over God’s Chosen City. “And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, ‘Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. For the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you. And they will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your visitation.’” (Luke 19:41-44) Their Messiah is coming to fulfill every covenant promise God has made throughout their history; but even so, most will fail to recognize and worship Him. And the consequences of their failure to receive their Messiah will be terrifying.
Perhaps Judas becomes the saddest of all the tragic figures caught up in the ultimate revelation of the glory of Jesus when He is revealed through His betrayal, His trials, His torture, His crucifixion, His burial, and His resurrection. Judas’ price? Thirty pieces of silver. The price of a common slave. A pittance of a price for the precious life of Jesus. Notice in the passage above how clearly Zechariah predicted the specifics of Judas and his betrayal, and of the payment Judas received. Notice also that Zechariah accurately prophesies the actions of Judas when he realizes how disastrously his scheme has gone. “He cast them to the potter in the house of the LORD.” (Zechariah 11:13)
Even a Bible skeptic has to do some complicated mental gymnastics to explain away the shockingly accurate portrayal of the Messiah’s Crucifixion in Psalm 22. Behold the “dogs,” the Jewish leaders and the Jerusalem’s rebel spitting out taunts and curses at Jesus on the Cross. And see how they pierced His hands and His feet. Hundreds of years before Jesus was born, the Psalmist is inspired by God to pen these words which vividly describe Jesus and His suffering. God’s plan had always been for Jesus, the Son, to absorb all of God’s Just Wrath against sin, in this most hideous form of human suffering there just outside Jerusalem on a Roman Cross, rejected by His own people.
Again in Psalm 22:18, the Psalmist describes how the soldiers around the Cross cast lots for Jesus’ clothing. Indeed, God chose from eternity to bear the suffering for our sin. From the Garden, to the Ark, to the Exodus, to the Kingdom and the Temple, to the Exile, to the return, even to the coming of Jesus the Messiah; God’s plan had never wavered. He would be the Redeemer of His People throughout history and throughout the world. Eternal Truth cannot be explained away. May God soften their hearts who continue to shake their fists at Heaven and God who so longs to save them from sin and theirselves.
For as Isaiah says Jesus WAS pierced for our transgressions. (He had no transgressions.) Jesus. WAS crushed for our iniquities. (He had no iniquities.) Jesus DID bear our chastisement. (He deserved none.) Jesus DID bring us eternal heavenly peace. (We had none.) Jesus DID endure the wounds that healed us. (Jesus deserved none, not even one.) Again, God’s prophet spoke God’s inspired Word pointing through the centuries to the time when Jesus would pay it all for each of us.
Once again God uses the psalmist to look beyond the crucifixion and burial to the glorious resurrection—and again in fulfillment of God’s eternal plan. Notice the powerful phrase, “ . . . my glory rejoices; . . . “ Then, pointing to Jesus as the Son of Man, “ . . . My flesh also will rest in hope.” Speaking to the Father; “. . . You will not leave my soul in Sheol, Nor will You allow Your Holy One to see corruption.” God will show the Messiah the path of life. And here is a central foundation truth—in God’s Presence (alone) is the fullness of joy. Not just joy, but eternal pleasures forevermore. What a powerful testimony to the coming into fulfillment of God’s eternal gospel plan—when He will be glorified and His multitudes of the redeemed, will be in His Presence forever. Hallelujah amen!
