Today's the first day of a new semester beginning this new year, and the commutes began again. It's not comforting, being cold and alone mornings and nights, but my thoughts and the music that plays with them keep me calm. Aaaand that's enough drama for the rest of this year out of me.
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Jesus is unbelievably cool. God is awful in His ways, not simply awesome.
God speaks to His people in ways they can understand, using baby-talk and pictures and brilliant sunsets and spooky darknesses and rivers of blood and miraculous trees and languages He made for joyful voices. And not only does He allow His servants to perform acts that chronicle the history of His grace, but He used inside jokes and puns and feeble illustrations in the words of the prophets and apostles!
That being said, here are a few ways--
1. One of the titles the people gave for the long-expected Messiah was "the Expected (Coming) One." This is evidenced by Luke 7 (NASB), where John the Baptist sends some of his disciples to ask Jesus whether He was the "Coming One," which was really asking in subtext whether Jesus was the Christ, the Messiah, the Anointed One.
1.1. John the Baptist prophesied that the Coming One would proceed him both in superiority and in the time of their respective ministries! John the Baptist did this to dissuade the people from incorrectly believing that he was the Messiah. (Luke 3, Mark 1 [NASB])
2. Greater than Solomon in wisdom, the Messiah was expected to be a great king and restore Israel to even greater splendor and peace and power as being the focus of God's gracious blessing. (1 Kings 10:23 and 2 Chronicles 9:22)
Jesus pulls this trump card condemning the Pharisees' desire for signs (miracles served the purpose of pointing to and confirming the messenger's authority and the veracity of the message) in the gospels of Matthew and Luke: Matthew 12:42, Luke 11:31
Then some of the scribes and Pharisees said to Him,
"Teacher, we want to see a sign from You."
But He answered and said to them,
"An evil and adulterous generation craves for a sign;
and yet no sign will be given to it but the sign of Jonah the prophet;
for just as JONAH WAS THREE DAYS AND THREE NIGHTS IN THE BELLY OF THE SEA MONSTER,
so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.
The men of Ninevah will stand up with this generation at the judgment,
and will condemn it because they repented at the preaching of Jonah;
and behold, something greater than Jonah is here.
The Queen of the South will rise up with this generation at the judgment
and will condemn it, because she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon;
and behold, something greater than Solomon is here.
Matthew 12:38-45
Now why would Jesus throw the bit about the Queen of Sheba (as we assume, who was recorded to have come to Solomon for his wisdom), and calling Himself greater than Solomon if He were not reiterating the fact that He is the supreme King of kings greater even than Solomon, the greatest king before Him?
3. Another common belief of the time, courtesy of Coach Bex's LCB class, was that the Messiah would come as a fulfillment of Moses and the Prophets (and the Poetic Writings). Jesus states this plainly, but there were plenty of false claims made in Jesus's day to being the Messiah. Jesus was transfigurated by God with the words of all three parts of the Scriptures--
Then a voice came out of the cloud, saying,
"This is my Son,
My Chosen One;
listen to Him!"
Luke 9:35
Then a cloud formed, overshadowing them, and a voice came out of the cloud,
"This is My beloved Son,
listen to Him!"
Mark 9:7
While he [Peter] was still speaking, a voice out of the cloud said,
"This is My beloved Son,
with whom I am well-pleased;
listen to Him!"
Matthew 17:5
All three of the synoptic gospels record the transfiguration of Jesus, which is where God glorifies His name and confirms Jesus to be the culmination of all three portions of the Jewish Scriptures. The first part of the statement is a quote from Psalm 2:7--
"I will surely tell of the decree of the LORD:
He said to Me,
'You are My Son, Today I have begotten You.'"
The second portion which varies in its closeness from "Chosen One" to "beloved" to "well-pleasing" is taken from Isaiah 42:1, the beginning of Isaiah's messianic prophesy of the "Servant of the Lord," and from the trial of Abraham and Isaac--
"Behold, My Servant, whom I hold fast; My Chosen One in whom My soul delights.
I have put My Spirit upon Him; He will bring forth justice to the Gentiles."
He [God] said,
"Take now your son, your only son, whom you love, Isaac, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I will tell you."
Genesis 22:2
The last portion is not referenced in my Bible, because it is not quoted word-for-word, but it is the fulfillment of Moses's indicative statement to the Israelites in his last discourse:
"The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me
from among you, from your brothers,
you shall listen to him.
This is according to all that you asked of the LORD your God in Horeb on the day of the assembly, saying,
'Let me [us] not hear again the voice of the LORD my [our] God,
let me [us] not see this great fire anymore, or I will die.'
The LORD said to me,
'They have done well what they have spoken.
I will raise up a prophet from among their brothers like you,
and I will put My words in his mouth,
and he shall speak to them all that I command him.
It shall come about that whoever will not listen to My words which he shall speak in My name,
I Myself will require it of him.
But the prophet who speaks a word presumptuously in My name which I have not commanded him to speak, or which he speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet shall die.'
You may say in your heart,
'How will we know the word which the LORD has not spoken?'
When a prophet speaks in the name of the LORD,
if the thing does not come about or come true,
that is the thing which the LORD has not spoken.
The prophet has spoken it presumptuously;
you shall not be afraid of him.
Deuteronomy 18:15-22
Here God also spells out the purpose of miracles which I previously explained. However, the opposing statement is true: we are to fear the words of the LORD, and to respect and heed the warnings of the great Prophet, who supersedes and is the end to the prophecies of the old covenant (Hebrews 1:1-2)
God quotes Himself!!!!!! How much lower will He stoop to accommodate our simplicity and filth and weakness?
He took it upon Himself to unite Himself with man. Emmanuel was the new mediator, the new Prophet to bring God's words down from the mountain covered with smoke and cloud. Emmanuel was the King that Isaiah and the Psalmists prophesied would reign in truth and justice, and who truly was the Jeduthun, son of the king named "Beloved" (that's David). Emmanuel was the High Priest who offered Himself as the only sacrifice that would do--the sacrifice of the firstborn son, the Passover lamb dedicated to God so that the angel of the LORD would pass over the sins of all the Isaacs of God's covenant family.
He [God] made Him [Jesus] who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.
2 Corinthians 5:20-21
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