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description. Now let's dive into today's
message. Something big is coming, but
here is my big question for everyone.
What are we waiting for? For Jesus to come back.
OK, any other answers? What are we waiting for when
we're counting down the day to Christmas for the day that Jesus
was born? I can see people have been
teaching their children the Bible.
Anyone else waiting for something different?
Food Time with family presents? Yes.
OK, you see, if we are quite honest, some of us might be
waiting for the Christmas presents and some of us might be
waiting for the food and the party and the time with family
and friends that we don't see all the time.
But at the end of the day, the whole point of this time leading
up to Christmas is to remind us that we are waiting for a
person. We are waiting for Jesus because
that's what Christmas is all about.
And Advent remembers that when Jesus came, he was someone that
God's people had been waiting for for a very long time.
But when Jesus first came into the world as a baby, how did
they know that he was the one they were waiting for?
I mean, I'm sure many babies were born around that time.
And how did they know that he was the 1:00?
We'd be throwing parties for thousands of years in the
future. Well, the Bible does have some
answers for us. And I want to look at what it
what some of those answers are by looking at three things they
were waiting for. The Bible tells us a lot in the
Old Testament about this person that was going to come.
And I want to look at three of those things about that they
said about him. For one, they were waiting for a
Messiah. Another, they were waiting for a
Saviour. And finally, they were waiting
for God. So waiting for a Messiah.
If you asked a Jew around the time that Jesus was born what
they were waiting for, the likely answer would be we're
waiting for the Messiah. Messiah right now.
That's a funny word, and if you don't know what it means, it can
sound a little strange, a little confusing.
What is a Messiah? Well, technically Messiah means
Anointed 1, which is referring to a practice where when God set
someone aside for a special job, he would have a profit go and
pour oil on their head as a sign that he was chosen by God for
this job. Now one of the common ways
anointing was used was to show who's going to be the next king.
And so over time, Messiah began to be a word associated with the
king that Israel was waiting for.
But Israel had had many kings, and if you read your Old
Testament, you'll see the prophecies begin to build up a
picture of a very specific kind of king, and often a king that
wasn't seen in the kings of the past.
There were always shortfalls, things that didn't measure up.
So now I'm going to just read 11 chapter from one passage from
Isaiah as an example. By the way, I love the book of
Isaiah. You'll see it come up a lot.
I've seen it described as the Gospel of the Old Testament
because it is just so rich with with Jesus in it.
So I'm going to read from Chapter 11 starting at verse
one. Out of the stump of David's
family will grow a shoot. Yes, a new branch bearing fruit
from the old root. There's clue number one about
the identity of this Messiah. He has to come from the family
line of King David and the stump is cut off When when Israel was
exiled, it looked like the tree was gone.
But someone was going to come from that line.
And the Spirit of the Lord will rest on him, the spirit of
wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the
spirit of knowledge and fear of the Lord.
He will delight in obeying the Lord.
He will not judge by appearance nor make decisions based on
hearsay. He will give justice to the poor
and make fair decisions for the exploited.
So here we're seeing a picture of a king who is a good king.
He's a fair king. I know every small child knows
the meaning of the word fair because you'll be so quick to
say that's not fair. And this king would be a wise
king, the kind of king who is compassionate to the poor and
the weak and those who are oppressed by the powerful.
The earth will shake at the force of his word, and one
breath from his mouth will destroy the wicked.
Now destroy sounds a little bit more intense than just punish
some of the wicked. Make sure a few of them get
what's coming to them. It almost sounds like the wicked
are going to be completely dealt with, like there will be no more
problem of the wicked. He will wear righteousness like
a belt, and truth like an undergarment.
In that day the wolf and the lamb will lie down, will live
together. The leopard will lie down with
the baby goat. The calf and the yearling will
be safe with the lion, and a little child will lead them all.
The cow will graze near the bear.
The cub and the calf will lie down together.
The lion will eat hay like a cow.
The baby will play safely near the whole of a cobra.
Yes, a little child will put his hand in the nest of deadly
snakes without harm. Nothing will hurt or destroy in
my holy mountain for us. The waters fill the sea, so the
earth will be full of the knowledge, full with people who
know the Lord. Now, whether this is simply
metaphoric language for the peace and safety that people
will experience under his reign, or whether this is something
that's still to come, that's a pretty impressive picture of
peace, isn't it? There's no danger to worry about
when this king is ruling. And in that day, the heir to
David's throne will be a banner of salvation to all the world,
and the nations will rally to him, and the land where he lives
will be a glorious place. And in that day, the Lord will
reach out his hand a second time to bring back the remnant of his
people, those who remain in Assyria and northern Egypt and
southern Egypt, Ethiopia and Elam, in Babylonia, Hamas and
all the distant coastlines. That's just a bunch of places on
the map. You can look them up if you're
interested. He will raise a flag among the
nation, the the nations, and assemble all the Exiles of
Israel. He will gather the scattered
people of Judah from the ends of the earth.
So finally, in this passage, we see that he will gather up his
people, Israel, who was scattered, right?
They've been sent everywhere away from their homeland, and
he's going to bring them back to himself.
So you can kind of see why at this point in Israel's history,
they're living under Roman rule. They are not free.
It's easy to see why the Jews would be waiting for a Messiah
who would be a leader who would free them from their oppressive
Roman occupiers and bring the Jewish people back to their
land. The problem is there were many
people around that time who either claimed to be the Messiah
or people thought they were the Messiah, which is what would
help them to rally the people around them to try and overthrow
the Roman rule. Now the Bible mentions a few of
them. In Acts chapter 5 and Acts
chapter 21 we hear about these other Messiah figures.
Thudus managed to rally 400 men before he was killed and his
people dispersed. Then came Judah or Judas the
Galilean, who is the one credited with starting the
Zealots. You would have heard of them in
the New Testament too. And he led a bunch of people in
revolt before he was killed and his followers were scattered.
Judah also got a mention outside of the Bible.
Josephus, a historian of that time, also wrote about him and
described it as one who considered it shameful for the
Jews to agree to pay tribute to Roman rulers, and shameful for
them to tolerate a human master when they've got God as their
king. He also apparently had a prophet
who would go ahead of him the same way that Elijah was meant
to prophecy and warned that the coming of the Lord, the Messiah,
was going to come. And in Acts 21 we see another
example. The soldiers were confusing Paul
with an Egyptian Jew who had stirred up a revolt and LED 4000
terrorists into the wilderness. Right.
In fact, there were so many potential messiahs that Josephus
almost describes this period as some sort of Messiah fever,
right? If it was social media, it would
have been in the headlines all the time, right?
There's another Messiah. In fact, he writes the following
after Herod's death in book 17, chapter 10 of his histories.
Now at this time there were 10,000 other disorders in the in
Judea which were like tumults because of a great number put
themselves into warlike posture. OK, bit of a funny Latin hard
language. So let me put it into plain
language. He seems to see it as 10,000.
That's not a small #10,000 other problems happening in this place
in Judea. And they're like uproars or
riots. They're not small problems.
There's not someone in the marketplace having a fight,
right? And the reason is people were
setting themselves up as enemies of Rome.
That means people from the Jewish people were standing up
and trying to fight back. And then he goes on to to give
examples, many examples of Judeans rallying troops, burning
things, riots and so on. And then of course, the Romans
come in and the histories that he writes, they come in and save
the day. He he paints them as the heroes
who are squashing time and again, these uprisings of the
Jewish people. He doesn't explicitly use the
word Messiah, but given the context, it's very likely that
this is what rallied the people around those those charismatic
leaders that they hoped would liberate them from Rome.
And when you understand this context, it seems a little less
outrageous to consider Herod's reaction to the news that, Oh
no, there's another Messiah being spotted in Judea, right?
It also helps explain why 30 years down the line when Jesus
is teaching, they were more interested.
The leaders of the people of Israel were more interested in
keeping the peace than in going deeper into his claims that he
was the one God sent, because likely they had heard it all
many many times before and it had got them nothing but
trouble. So how would they have known
that Jesus was the real deal? Well, the answer is, as the kids
had started pointing out, the fulfilment of prophecy and there
were many prophecies about the Messiah to to fulfil, ranging
from where and how and when he would be born and where he would
live and what he would do. That's why the little details
mattered, like the fact that Jesus was born in a town called
Bethlehem. That's why it mattered that he
was from the town of David, the line of David.
That's why it mattered that he was born of a virgin and that
there was going to be a massacre of the scale of that would leave
the women and children, the women of Israel, weeping for
their children. It mattered that he spent time
in Egypt and that he was identified with Galilee where he
started his ministry, that he would live in the time before
the temple was destroyed, that he would die and rise again,
because these things were the things that the prophets had
said would be true of God's special king.
And as he fulfilled more and more of the things that he
prophesied hundreds of years before, it became clearer that
this man was the one that they had been waiting for.
He was the one that was promised by God.
But you see, there was something about this person that God had
promised that many in Israel missed.
They were waiting for a conqueror, a warrior who would
lead them to freedom from their enemies, a king who would
establish the Kingdom of Israel again.
But when God's anointed king arrived, he came with a very
different mission. You see, while the Old Testament
scriptures do seem to give the bulk of the prophecies to the
Jewish people in particular, there is enough in there to
suggest that His plan was always bigger than Israel alone.
And while the oppression of Israel under other nations was a
very real problem that God's people were waiting and praying
to be delivered from, the story of the Bible points to an even
bigger problem that God was working on solving right in the
beginning of the story of history.
In Genesis 315 we see the first of the Messianic prophecies when
God curses the serpent who tempted Eve to disobey him and
commit the first sin. He says to the serpent, I will
cause hostility. I will cause fighting between
you and the woman and between your offspring and her
offspring. He will strike your head and you
will strike his heel. Now there's a lot more going on
here than an origin story for the deep distrust and fear that
many of us feel towards creatures of the snake variety.
This is a promise that the enemy of God and of mankind will
ultimately be crushed by a descendant of the woman, but not
before he is first struck by the enemy.
You see, from the very beginning of God's story, it's been a
story about how our holy God has been working to restore
relationship between Himself and the people He made who was
separated from Him because of their sin.
Our biggest problem has never been any of the many variations
of damaged relationships between US and other people that we
experience. Though that's not to say that
the harm we cause each other is in any way right or not a
problem, but that's not our biggest problem.
The thing that God has been working to fix all along was the
sin that broke the relationship between US and our loving
Creator. And this is ultimately what he
came to resolve that one Passover when he was hung on the
cross at Calvary. And there the punishment that we
deserved for our sins was paid in full by the sacrifice of the
one perfect man who had never once sinned.
Now let me back up a little bit here.
If you thinking, hold on, this doesn't line up with the picture
of the liberating king who will bring his people back from
exile, don't worry, you're not alone.
Many of God's people were confused by that turn of events.
If Jesus really was their Messiah, who they believed would
free them from Roman rule, how could he die like that, hanging
on a cross? Many of God's people in Israel
didn't recognize their Messiah because they couldn't understand
how those different ideas fit together.
But they had forgotten that this was also part of God's plan from
the very beginning and that God had left them clues in the
Scriptures. When John the Baptist first saw
Jesus coming towards him as he was baptizing, he prophetically
announced, Look the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the
world. Not only was Jesus death
foreshadowed in the picture God had given of the Passover lamb,
but His reason for dying that Passover week was also predicted
in another one of Isaiah's prophecies.
Let me read from Isaiah 53. I'm going to start at verse 3.
For the sake of time, I'm cutting where I can.
This is describing the servant of the Lord.
But if you want the full picture, start at chapter 52,
just the last few verses. It's really amazing.
Now I'm not going to give commentary along the way.
Let it soak in and let God remind you what this is saying.
He was despised and rejected, a man of sorrows acquainted with
deepest grief. We turned our backs on Him and
looked the other way. He was despised, and we did not
care. Yet it was our weaknesses that
He carried. It was our sorrows that weighed
Him down, and we thought his troubles were a punishment from
God, a punishment for His own sins.
But He was pierced for our rebellion, crushed for our sins.
He was beaten so that we could be whole.
He was whipped so that we could be free, be healed.
And all of us, like sheep, have strayed away.
We have left God's paths to follow our own.
Yet the Lord laid on him the sins of us all.
He was oppressed and treated harshly, yet He never said a
word. He was like a lamb led to the
slaughter, and as a sheep is silent before her shearers.
He did not open his mouth. Unjustly condemned, he was led
away. No one cared that he died
without descendants, that his life was cut short in midstream,
but he was struck down for the rebellion of my people.
He had done no wrong and had never deceived anyone, but he
was buried like a criminal. He was put in a rich man's
grave, but it was the Lord's good plan to crush him and cause
him grief. And if you haven't caught it
yet, here has where you need to pay attention yet.
When his life is made an offering for sin, there's the
reason he came. He will have many descendants.
He will enjoy a long life, and the Lord's good plan will
prosper in His hands. When he sees all that is
accomplished by his anguish, he'll be satisfied.
And because of his experience, my righteous servant will make
it possible for many to be counted righteous, for he will
bear their sins. I will give him the honors of a
victorious soldier. Because he exposed himself to
death, He was counted among rebels, and he bore the sins of
many and interceded for the rebels.
The Messiah that Israel had been waiting for was more than just a
king who would liberate his people from one oppressive ruler
in one lifetime, because there's always the next.
The promised chosen king that God sent that first Christmas
was the sinless one who would suffer and die for our sins so
that we could be made right with God.
And as this prophecy also foreshadows, he would not stay
dead otherwise. It's contradicting,
contradicting itself. He would have no descendants,
but he'll have many descendants. He will die, He will come back,
and then he will have many children.
He would be raised from the dead and live forever ruling over
God's people. So they were waiting for a
Messiah. They were waiting for a Saviour.
Well, if the Israelites had missed something so big about
this person they were waiting for, is it possible there is
something else they might have missed?
Well yes, it was something else that took even Jesus closest
disciples a while to figure out. See, the promised king and
promised Saviour was more than just a man.
He was also God in the flesh. We see this hinted already in
Chapter 9 of Isaiah. For the sake of time, I'm just
going to read a few verses. Verses 2 and three and then six
and seven. The people who walk in darkness
will see a great light. For those who live in the land
of deep darkness, a light will shine, you will enlarge the
nation of Israel and it's people will rejoice.
They will rejoice before you as people rejoice at harvest and
like warriors dividing plunder. For to us a child is born, a son
is given to us. The government will rest on his
shoulders and he will be called wonderful Counsellor, mighty
God, everlasting Father, and Prince of Peace.
His government and its peace will never end.
He will rule with fairness and justice from the throne of his
ancestor David for all eternity. The passionate commitment of the
Lord of Heaven's armies will make this happen.
That was all 700 years before Jesus.
Now the disciple John recognized this truth about Jesus when he
introduced his Gospel in this way.
In John one we read in the beginning, the Word already
existed. The Word was with God, and the
Word was God. He existed in the beginning with
God, and God created everything through him.
Nothing was created except through Him.
The Word gave life to everything that was created, and His life
brought light to everyone. The light shines in the
darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it.
God sent a man, John the Baptist, to tell about the light
so that everyone might believe his testimony.
John himself was not the light. He was simply a witness to tell
about the light. The one who is the true light,
who gives light to everyone, was coming into the world.
He came into the world he created, but the world didn't
recognize him. He came to his own people and
even they rejected him. But to all who believed Him and
accepted him, He gave the right to become children of God,
reborn, not with a physical birth resulting from human
passion or plan, but a birth that comes from God.
So the Word became human and made His home among us.
He was full of unfailing love and faithfulness, and we've seen
His glory, the glory of the Father's one and only Son.
Now it's clear, the way John writes in his chapter and the
rest of his gospel, that Jesus is more than just a man sent by
God. Jesus is God taking on flesh in
order to bring his own rescue plan to fulfilment.
And John isn't the only New Testament writer to recognize
who Jesus is, though maybe he's the most obvious of them.
Other writers, like Paul and Peter and the author of Hebrews
all come to the same conclusion. The letter to the Hebrews goes
so far as describing Jesus as the exact representation of
God's being. In other words, if you've seen
Jesus, you have seen God. The message of Christmas is not
just one of God sending a special prophet to do his
bidding. It is a story of God himself
coming down and walking among us, living among us, God himself
coming to rescue his people, to restore the relationship between
him and himself and us. This is why Jesus is also called
Emmanuel, which means God with us.
So to wrap this up, when Jesus came into the world born as a
helpless baby to live a perfect and sinless life, he came as the
King that was promised long ago. He came also as a Saviour who
would deal with our biggest problem, our sin that separates
us from knowing God. And he came as God walking among
us, making himself known to us so that we could understand just
how much he loves us. But many of God's people still
missed Him when he came. They didn't recognize Him, even
though had they had waited for such a very, very long time for
his coming. Many didn't recognize Him even
as he walked around among them and taught them about why he
came. So I want to turn to us today
with all the evidence that the Bible presents.
And I want to ask you, what will you do with the Messiah that
God's people had waited so long for?
Will you recognize him and learn from him and trust him and
follow him as King and Saviour and God?
Or will you, like so many others in Jesus day, who saw God
Himself, miss the one that history itself was waiting for,
that was promised from the very beginning?
I want to urge you not to be like those who reject Him, but
instead choose to trust Him and to celebrate Him who invites us
to become children of God. Even for those of us who already
follow Him, let's not miss Him in our Christmas celebrations.
Let's not let it be all about the presence and the party and
the food. This is a time for remembering
and great rejoicing that He came and waiting for Him to come
again. Let us pray.
Father God, thank you for your wonderful plan to save us and to
restore our relationship with you through sending Jesus
Christ. Thank you that at Christmas we
get to remember how wonderful your plans are and how faithful
you are in fulfilling all that You promised.
Help us to keep keep trusting You as we continue to wait for
Jesus to come back again and to keep praising You as we
celebrate another beautiful Christmas in Jesus name, Amen.
Thank you for listening to today's message.
We hope you are encouraged and challenged in your faith.
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