6 ’Jesus as Messiah’
The term Messiah or Christ is for us as Christians, without doubt, one of the most significant descriptions of Jesus within the whole of the N/T it links the O/T promises of Gods Salvation to Israel directly to Jesus and encompasses both ‘who’ Jesus was and ‘what’ he came to do.
In the O/T perhaps the most important reference to the coming Messiah, particularly in relation to how the term came to be understood at the time of Jesus, is found in Isaiah chapters 9 and 11 where the writer tells us of a ‘one who is to come’ he will, “smite the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips, he will slay the wicked, He will purge the earth of wickedness, gather faithful Israel together and reign forever from the throne of David over a transformed earth! Well, Sounds a bit grim really doesn’t it but this was the typical apocalyptic picture that Israel developed to describe their view of their future hoped for salvation and remembering what we said three weeks ago about how the Bible can reflect the cultural influences of its writers you can understand why they would see their future salvation in these almost military and cataclysmic terms… really, after all they were always in the poo in some way or another, either condemned by the prophets, conquered by another country, enslaved, bullied, even in the time of Jesus they were a conquered nation under the rule of Rome. One can forgive them then for thinking then that evil ruled the world and that they needed a supernaturally gifted Kingly led deliverance from their God to put all things back into the right order and being a sort of, let’s say, rather optimistic bunch, they figured that the end result of this would be their dominance as a nation over all the world, led by this super Messiah King in the name of their God!
And by the time that Jesus burst onto the scene this particular hope of a Messianic deliverance and a God led apocalypse was at its peak.
So for Israel, at the time of Jesus the term ‘Messiah’ basically signified a longing for a coming supernatural and military style king who would destroy all evil deliver Gods people from their oppression and recreate the universe under his own mighty rule (John the Baptist intro)……………
Now, what about Jesus……From the evidence of the N/T we can see that Jesus quite plainly believed that this was who he was, however it is also clear that this popular apocalyptic interpretation of the Messiahs role was not one that Jesus shared and led to some obvious difficulties which meant that at first Jesus was somewhat reticent about his claims.
One particular theologian has suggested that Jesus actually actively hid his belief in his designation as Messiah and to be fair Jesus didn’t spend much time shouting it from the roof tops at the beginning of his ministry, probably exactly because of the violent and political connotations that the term had come to hold in the eyes of both the Jews and Rome alike, there had been previous uprisings prior to Jesus where people had proclaimed themselves as the Messiah and tried to lead armed revolts against the occupying Roman authorities, needless to say they had been brutally killed and the uprisings had been equally as brutally quelled, had Jesus gone around then advertising himself in this way as soon as he appeared without being able to explain how he saw his role then his followers would have got the wrong idea and he and his disciples probably would have been done in pretty quickly.
But far more importantly of course, as I have mentioned, was the fact that Jesus just didn’t see his mission as the Messiah in these popular armed revolutionary terms, Jesus saw his mission as the bringing in of Gods Kingdom rule into the world of course, but he envisaged this as happening in a completely different way to those Israel had come to expect.
He saw the kingdoms conquest of the world not as an armed conflict but as a spiritual conquest within the hearts of men and through the transforming experience of the Spirit within our lives and the world, a violent political mission was ever in his remit. Israel’s cultural interpretation of his mission had been wrong they had missed the point.
So if we accept that Jesus did believe he was this Messiah even though he changed the content of the role how then did Jesus advertise his identity?
Firstly:
The main mission of the Messiah was believed to be the re-introduction of the kingdom of God, that is the rule or authority, presence and power of God into the life of Israel and the world and this Jesus claimed to do in almost everything he did.
He interpreted, for example, his miracles in this way and in particular his acts of deliverance “If I by the Spirit of God caste out demons then the kingdom of God has come upon you.”
He also claimed to have defeated Satan and to be “plundering his house”. A major mission of the Messiah.
The whole temptations experience was in fact about just this point, that in it Jesus defeated Satan and because of this was able to start bringing in Gods Kingdom to the lives of men.
Jesus forgave Sins, another Kingdom benefit, he healed the sick a sign of the kingdoms presence again and again in everything he did he fulfilled the role and mission of Israel’s saviour King ………..the list goes on.
Specifically however Jesus affirms his Messianic position when he confronts his disciples in Mark chapter 8 also Matthew chapter 18 when he asks his disciples “who do people say I am” Peter, as we know replies “You are the Christ (same meaning as Messiah) the Son of the living God” Jesus replies “Blessed are you Simon Bar-Jona! For flesh and blood have not revealed this to you but my Father in heaven” -pretty plain.
Finally, of course, Jesus raised the Dead! He rode into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday in a clear fulfilment of the most commonly recognised Messianic prophecy of the time. (Zechariah chapter 9) and in the end this proclamation was the reason he was executed.
He told the Sanhedrin that he would ‘sit at the right hand of God’ the Messiahs place, and when asked by Pilot, he refused to deny it.
So we can confidently prove that Jesus believed he was the Messiah.
He may have rejected the most commonly held political and military descriptions of the role but he demonstrated that he was nevertheless bringing the end to the rule of evil and ushering in the Kingdom of God. He, Gods anointed, was and would wage a Holy spiritual war from which a new Israel would emerge with him as their righteous King. And this new Israel, the new Christian church would be one day gathered up and brought back to their rightful place within the heart of God.
Through Jesus the Kingdom rule of God was re-entering the arena of mankind.
How does this affect us today?
As with all our research into doctrine one of the most important questions is how this discovery helps us in our lives, well firstly if Jesus is this longed for saviour Messiah from God then it means that if we believe in him then we can…..receive……
1. The removal of the power of evil from its dominance over our lives.
The bible is quite clear in its belief that outside of the influence of Jesus men and women are under the dominant power of Sin and evil, this power, not their own personalities or Gods love dominates their lives. Outside of Christ we are outside of the Kingdom and at the mercy of other forces not good or wholesome, we are lost….. to coin a good biblical phrase.
In Christ we are given the ability to step out from this darkness into the influence of the Kingdom of God where we can begin to experience the saving presence of God in our lives. And once in the kingdom by Faith, the power of the Holy Spirit becomes the overriding force within us displacing evil and bringing us into the presence of the Father where evil cannot live.
And secondly we discover the possibility of receiving now something of the benefits of the kingdom within our lives. We discover:
Gods presence.
Forgiveness
The Love of God
Healing
Peace with God and the promise of Eternal life when we die.
Jesus, then, is the promised Messiah the one who accomplished all that was promised from age to age and for those who have come to know Christ these experiences are ultimately I suppose the final proof.
In the N/T then Jesus adopts for himself the role of the long awaited promised O/T Messiah King the one who was to bring salvation and deliverance into the lives of Men, he rejected the popularist Jewish ‘God of War’ interpretation of that role but in its place taught an experience of deliverance based on the Power of Gods Spirit and the presence of the kingdom within peoples lives and in this new interpretation he fulfilled all the previous promises given, evil is defeated, deliverance is obtained the Kingdom has come and is within you.