Do we believe the prophetic words we constantly sing? Does the light of ancient biblical prophecy startle and shock us as it properly should? Do we expect people to believe Almighty God has been continuously speaking, in one way or another, from age to age? Do we believe that amidst the despair and turmoil of this world that there is one anchor that will hold us fast?
At the very beginning of the book of Hebrews, the writer began his extended and very involved explanation of the absolute supremacy of Jesus Christ by saying, “In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways.” Do we honestly believe that? Has God really spoken through the prophets at many times and in various ways? Has God spoken so clearly through the prophets that we can actually go check out what His prophets supposedly said against what we know happened historically? Is there truly anything verifiable or remotely scientific about this Christianity business or is all this following Jesus stuff just some cultural thing we have to blindly and naïvely accept by faith?
On this first Sunday in Advent, it is church tradition to set aside a few moments to think about the importance and spiritual ramifications of prophecy, especially the prophecies relating to Jesus. I believe this discussion matters enormously. I believe Almighty God never intended us to check our brains at the door when we come to faith. I believe God spoke and still speaks truthfully through the light of His ancient prophets because He wants you and I to know beyond any shadow of doubt exactly who this Jesus of Nazareth was, is and always will be.
But we have a hard time with prophecy sometimes, don’t we? Have you ever looked up the over 300 prophecies supposedly having something to do with Jesus the Messiah in the Old Testament and found yourself scratching your head? Have you ever found yourself wondering how in the world anyone could ever believe this or that obscure reference could be about Jesus? I’ll admit sometimes many of the prophecies the ancient Jews believed to refer to their coming Messiah were sort of obscure and difficult for us to understand. Granted; but a whole lot of ancient prophecy about Jesus wasn’t obscure at all. Let’s review some of it today…
Beginning right at the beginning in Genesis 3, as God was prophesying to the serpent about what was going to happen in the future as a result of the evil he had helped to bring into the bliss of the Garden, God said: "Cursed are you above all the livestock and all the wild animals! You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel." Her descendents will produce a boy that will one day be wounded, but crush you anyway! And yet biblically, women were almost never said to have their own offspring; men had offspring through women. The ancient world was sexist in its descriptions of these genealogical things. So why does Almighty God here say Eve’s offspring and not Adam’s? I think I know. I think the only woman in our spiritual history ever said to have her own offspring, apart from a man, was a girl named Mary, the virgin mother of Jesus.
And in Isaiah 7:14, we are told very clearly that one of the signs we are to be looking for is exactly that: a virgin giving birth. The prophet said: “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.”
And in Micah 5:2, we are told very specifically the obscure little town in which that virgin birth will one day take place. The prophet said, “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times.” When we read this verse in the much more literal New American Standard Bible, the ancient prophecy is even more startling. It reads: “But as for you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, too little to be among the clans of Judah, from you One will go forth for Me to be ruler in Israel. His goings forth are from long ago, from the days of eternity.” Pretty cool, huh?
In Zechariah, a prophetic book filled with ancient Hebrew references to the Messiah, we find the prophet describing very clearly the way in which Jesus would one day enter Jerusalem. The prophet said, “Rejoice greatly, O Daughter of Zion! Shout, Daughter of Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you, righteous and having salvation, gentle and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” Could a prophetic picture of our Palm Sunday Jesus be any clearer?
And yet these often neglected and maligned prophets also seemed very aware that the Messiah would not always ride victoriously among the people. Several of them describe a time in which Messiah would be abandoned by His followers. In Zechariah 13:7, we read: “Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, against the man who is close to me!” declares the Lord Almighty. "Strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered, and I will turn my hand against the little ones.” The prophets knew Messiah would face pain, difficulty and rejection.
In Zechariah 11:12-13, we learn through the ancient prophet that the thirty pieces of silver used to betray the Messiah would eventually be thrown into the temple and used to buy a potter’s field of all things. The prophet said, “So they paid me thirty pieces of silver. And the Lord said to me, "Throw it to the potter"--the handsome price at which they priced me! So I took the thirty pieces of silver and threw them into the house of the Lord to the potter.” That’s pretty strange and interesting phrasing, isn’t it? Throw them into the house of the Lord to the potter? It sort of sounds like exactly what Matthew told us Judas did in Matthew 27:3-10.
In Zechariah 12:10, we learn the Messiah would eventually be pierced by the very people He came to save. The prophet Zechariah said the people would eventually mourn the terrible things they will do to God’s chosen salvation. The prophet said, “And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and supplication. They will look on me, the one they have pierced, and they will mourn for him as one mourns for an only child, and grieve bitterly for him as one grieves for a firstborn son.” The Messiah will be pierced and yet also mourned by the people.
I suspect one of the most important things we must understand about ancient prophecy is that our LORD Jesus absolutely believed in it and regularly referred to it. Jesus wanted us all to understand these prophetic things. In Luke 4, Jesus stood up and read one of the most famous, familiar prophecies about the coming Messiah to his hometown crowd and, after telling them they had just heard the prophecy fulfilled, the people were so enraged they tried to throw Him off a cliff for blasphemy. They didn’t have any doubt about what Jesus was claiming!
All four Gospels repeatedly record instances of Jesus claiming to be the fulfillment of the ancient prophecies. In John 5, Jesus said “You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life…if you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me. But since you do not believe what he wrote, how are you going to believe what I say?” Jesus wanted all people to check the prophecies out because He knew that checking these things honestly and fairly would inevitably lead to one thrilling, glorious conclusion!
Even on the terrible night in which Jesus was betrayed in the Garden, He again referred to prophecy as He worked to calm down His confused disciples. Do we remember exactly what He said after the high priest’s slave got his ear cut off? He spoke to both His disciples and the people gathered in the garden. In Matthew 26:52-56, we hear Jesus say to his sword-grabbing disciples, “Put your sword back in its place…for all who draw the sword will die by the sword. Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels? But how then would the Scriptures be fulfilled that say it must happen in this way?" At that time Jesus said to the crowd, "Am I leading a rebellion, that you have come out with swords and clubs to capture me? Every day I sat in the temple courts teaching, and you did not arrest me. But this has all taken place that the writings of the prophets might be fulfilled." Then [in direct fulfillment of several prophecies] all the disciples deserted him and fled.” Jesus was constantly referring back to the ancient prophecies even as He was in the act of fulfilling those prophecies! Jesus wanted people to understand exactly who He was and what was going on. Jesus wants us to understand; our brains fully engaged!
In Luke 24, after the resurrection, after proving Himself to be gloriously alive, Jesus sat down with His disciples over a meal to explain things. And how did He begin the conversation in verse 44? He said to them, “This is what I told you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms.” If you would only study the ancient prophecies, if you would drink deeply of the Scriptures, if you would only use your bloomin’ heads about all this, you would understand what is going on here! Let the light of prophecy lead you to the one inescapable Truth! Hallelujah!
Perhaps one of the most tender and yet most misunderstood prophetic moments in the life of Jesus was that final, painful moment of suffering on the Cross when Jesus cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” All sorts of theories abound on why He said that. Some people even blasphemously speculate that this is a moment of doubt in the life of Jesus. Some folks even tragically argue this was the moment Jesus realized He was not the promised Messiah. They see this as the ultimate expression of disappointment and despair.
Yet still others of us, who don’t believe in a doubting or despairing Jesus, just write this comment off to the terrible suffering and sin-bearing of Jesus. We explain to our children that this was the moment at which God had to officially turn His back on the sin of the world that Jesus Christ was carrying to the Cross. And while this is a much better explanation than that of a doubting or despairing Jesus, I think many of us get so caught up in our tidy theological protectionism, we forget Jesus was just quoting the first line of a well-known, prophetic victory song. In His agony, Jesus was quoting the ancient, famous first line of a psalm of King David well-known for its almost eerie description of a person suffering crucifixion. Medical folks have even studied this psalm as a clinical description of the effects of crucifixion. So listen carefully to Psalm 22 and listen particularly to the way this prophetic victory song finishes and then tell me if you think Jesus was abandoned, disappointed or despairing on the Cross. David sang…
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer, by night, and am not silent. Yet you are enthroned as the Holy One; you are the praise of Israel.
In you our fathers put their trust; they trusted and you delivered them. They cried to you and were saved; in you they trusted and were not disappointed.
But I am a worm and not a man, scorned by men and despised by the people. All who see me mock me; they hurl insults, shaking their heads: "He trusts in the Lord; let the Lord rescue him. Let him deliver him, since he delights in him." Yet you brought me out of the womb; you made me trust in you even at my mother's breast. From birth I was cast upon you; from my mother's womb you have been my God. Do not be far from me, for trouble is near and there is no one to help. Many bulls surround me; strong bulls of Bashan encircle me. Roaring lions tearing their prey open their mouths wide against me. I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint. My heart has turned to wax; it has melted away within me. My strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth; you lay me in the dust of death. Dogs have surrounded me; a band of evil men has encircled me, they have pierced my hands and my feet. I can count all my bones; people stare and gloat over me. They divide my garments among them and cast lots for my clothing.
But you, O Lord, be not far off; O my Strength, come quickly to help me. Deliver my life from the sword, my precious life from the power of the dogs. Rescue me from the mouth of the lions; save me from the horns of the wild oxen. I will declare your name to my brothers; in the congregation I will praise you. You who fear the Lord, praise him! All you descendants of Jacob, honor him! Revere him, all you descendants of Israel! For he has not despised or disdained the suffering of the afflicted one; he has not hidden his face from him but has listened to his cry for help.
Almighty God has not despised or disdained me! The LORD has not abandoned his afflicted one! He has not hidden his face from me! He has listened to His cry for help! This awful cross is just the very first note of Almighty God’s constantly prophesied victory song!
Folks, remember the song! Remember the prophetic songs telling us everything was going to be this way! Remember the songs so you will recognize and remember your Savior!
May Almighty God overwhelm us today with the stunning realization that, inasmuch as we can know anything of a certainty, we can certainly know for a fact that the carpenter Jesus of Nazareth, was in fact our long-prophesied, long-awaited Savior! He is the One and the Only! He is the prophesied way, truth and life! May Elim Church be exhilarated by the great cloud of witnesses; by the fact that the prophets have spoken many times and in many ways! If history is history at all, if we are truly and honestly fair with the facts at all, we can know clearly and confidently that these prophesied words are true! It is my prayer that our realization of the stunning and absolute truth of these prophesied words would shock us into a renewed desire to follow our Savior this Advent season as He deserves to be followed! May this long prophesied baby we celebrate this month become fully, wonderfully and truthfully our Messiah!
Amen.
