Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Scripture Picture: Messiah the Son

Right off the bat, Matthew 1:1 says, The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham.

What does this mean?  God gives us a messianic picture with each of these titles. 

When God tested Abraham, to see if he was willing to give up his beloved son, He was giving us a prophetic picture of the future sacrifice of His own Son.  Isaac, son of Abraham, is a picture of the Suffering Servant, which was fufilled by Yeshua at His first earthly visitation.

The son of David however - Solomon - gives us a different picture.  Solomon was a glorious king of Israel, ruling his kingdom in peace and wisdom.  Solomon, son of David, gives us a prophetic picture of Yeshua, the Reigning King.

Ancient Hebrew rabbis understood that there was a scriptural picture of the Messiah being a suffering servant as well as a conquering king.  For awhile, it was thought by the ancient sages that there were two Messiahs, because of the very different nature of each one.  Then the thinking became that maybe there was only one Messiah, but that He comes twice.  This thinking does not exist right now in Judaism.  By the time of Yeshua, the Jewish people were oppressed by Rome and they were only looking and hoping for the Conquering King.  This is one of the reasons so many Jewish people missed the visitation of the Suffering Servant.

Look at Luke 4:16-22:
So He came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up. And as His custom was, He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and stood up to read.  And He was handed the book of the prophet Isaiah. And when He had opened the book, He found the place where it was written:
 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me,
Because He has anointed Me
To preach the gospel to the poor;
He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted,
To proclaim liberty to the captives
And recovery of sight to the blind,
To set at liberty those who are oppressed;
 To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.”
 Then He closed the book, and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all who were in the synagogue were fixed on Him.   And He began to say to them, “Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” 

If you go back to the book of Isaiah, you will see that Yeshua stopped reading in the middle of the verse, and did not quote the second half:  And the day of vengeance of our God.  Why did He stop?  Because the day of the Lord's wrath will not happen until He returns to the earth for a second time; no longer the Suffering Servent, but the Conquering King.

(If you keep reading in Luke 4, you will find that eventually the people in His hometown synagogue were so angry with Him that they wanted to throw Him off the cliff!)

I find it quite amazing that in the very first verse of the New Covenant, God gives us a picture of the dual roles of the Messiah.


No comments:

Post a Comment