Sermon Tone Analysis

Big idea: The Bible prophesied Jesus’ birth and many other aspects of His life, and He fulfilled them all.

The Bible also prophesied that Jesus will come again.

If he fulfilled the first, He will most certainly fulfill the second.

Introduction

In a couple weeks we will celebrate a uniquely Christian holiday—Christmas.

Sure, we’ll have to ignore a fair bit of secularization and the consumerism it has brought, but the holy part of the holiday is all about Jesus.

Around the time that Jesus was born the Jewish nation was itching for the Messiah to appear.

And yet, today, we still find Jews waiting for the Messiah.

To them, Jesus was an imposter.

Are they right?

Do we have this all wrong?

It doesn’t take much poking around to figure out that the Jews today have the same objections to Jesus as the Jewish leader’s in the time of Jesus.

To them, Jesus didn’t fulfill the most important Messianic prophecies—the prophecies of victory and conquering and vindication of the Jewish nation.

Add to that all the stuff that’s happened since the destruction of the Jewish temple and this is what they see:

Jesus didn’t build the Third Temple (Ezekiel 37:26-28).

He didn’t gather all Jews back to the Land of Israel (Isaiah 43:5-6).

He didn’t usher in an era of world peace, and end all hatred, oppression, suffering and disease.

As it says: "Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall man learn war anymore."

(Isaiah 2:4)

He didn’t spread a universal knowledge of the God of Israel, which would unite humanity as one.

As it says: "God will be King over all the world – on that day, God will be One and His Name will be One" (Zechariah 14:9).

Now, from my reading of the Bible, all these prophecies will be fulfilled by the Messiah, but the Messiah wasn’t suppose to come as a conquering king the first time, He was to be a suffering servant, and then later come back as the conquering king, but we’ll explore that in detail in a minute.

Jews also believe that the gift of prophecy ended with Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi when pretty much all the Jews were together.

That was over 350 years before Jesus, and so Jesus couldn’t be the prophet/messiah since there were no more prophets.

My question is, how do they come to the conclusion that there can only be a prophet if the majority of Jews are living in Israel?

Noah, Abraham and Moses all lived a large portion of their lives as prophets outside of the land of Israel—and before there were any Jews.

And there’s Balaam who lived in the general area of the promised land, and was a prophet of the Lord, but likely wasn’t even a descendent of Abraham.

And what about Melchizedek, who was a priest/prophet of the Lord who even Abraham paid tithe to.

So… lots of prophets existed before any Jew walked the earth or lived in the land of Israel.

I don’t see this as a compelling argument.

They also argue that Jesus wasn’t a descendant of David on his father’s side.

An interesting argument seeing as the Bible points to a divine conception in a virgin.

How could Jesus be a descendant of David on his father’s side if he didn’t have an earthly father?

There are a few other arguments they make but we’ll stop with this one: they say that the Messiah would need to fulfill the Torah.

In other words, He would lead all people to fully observe the Torah.

And, according to their thinking, Jesus was a false prophet because He disobeyed the Sabbath on multiple occasions, including the time he made a paste to heal a man’s eyes.

He also contradicted the Torah when he talked about the law in the sermon on the mount— “you have heard it said… but I say to you...” As I read the Bible I find that Jesus didn’t contradict the Torah or break the Sabbath, he fully revealed the character of God and exposed the doctrines of men that the teachers of the law had introduced into the Jewish services.

Sure, he defied the laws of men, but he magnified the law of God.

I’m intrigued by the Jewish response to Jesus because it was the Jews who held the oracles of God—it was to them that the prophets came, and it was their responsibility to be the caretakers of God’s prophetic revelations.

But most of us here aren’t Jews and likely don’t have that line of thinking about Jesus.

But… what about those in our day who dismiss Jesus as just another charismatic, religious leader?

Do we have a basis to truly believe that Jesus was the promised Messiah and the incarnate, Creator God? Was He more than just a good man?

I believe we do have a basis to believe that Jesus was much more than a good man.

There are clear and significant prophecies of the Messiah’s birth that make it impossible for Jesus to be just another man.

And, if Jesus fulfilled those prophecies of the Messiah’s birth, how much more confidence can we have that He will also fulfill the amazing prophecies about the end of sin and suffering and death?

Let’s look at these prophecies from the Old Testament and see what we discover.

Prophecies of Jesus birth

1.

The Messiah would come as a child

Handel popularized Isaiah 9 in his work, Messiah.

Many of you will hear the orchestration as I read this passage:

This first prophecy points to a child.

Not a long-reigning king, but a son.

And yet, it says that His name will be “mighty God,” and “everlasting father.”

In other words, if you’re looking for the Messiah, you need to start looking for a child.

2. Born of a Virgin

Isaiah was told to go to Ahaz, the father of Hezekiah, and a king which happened to not like the God of Israel.

God said, “go out to meet Ahaz…” and tell him to not be afraid because of Syria and Ephraim who were marshaling to fight against Judah.

“do not let your heart be afraid because of these two smoldering stumps...” God said.

Then God told Isaiah to tell Ahaz to ask a sign from God. “It can be as deep as Sheol or as high as heaven,” he said.

But Ahaz refused to ask for a sign from God.

So Isaiah said, “Hear then, O house of David!

Is it too little for you to weary men, that you weary my God also?”

That word, virgin, is the same word used by Abraham’s servant when he asked the Lord that whichever virgin comes out and gives him water and offers water to his camels too would be the girl God had chosen to marry Isaac.

Virgin means, young woman, and when the Bible authors use it they always mean an unmarried girl, with only two exceptions.

There are two places in the Bible where this word is used in the context of a style of music.

No place is this word used of a girl who has been with a man or who is married.

The author of the Gospel of Matthew repeated this prophecy from Isaiah and applied it to Jesus Matthew 1:23 ““Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel” (which means, God with us).”

It’s interesting to point out that very few people in history had their birth predicted.

This is the only birth of significance in all prophecy—and it had to be predicted in order for this abnormal situation to have any meaning.

If it weren’t predicted ahead of time, no one could have believed it.

3. Bethlehem

Let’s look at Micah 5:2 which says the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem:

This verse was quoted in Matthew 2:6, as the author is very careful to demonstrate to the Jews that Jesus fulfilled all these old testament prophecies.

When Jesus was in the middle of his ministry, some of the people heard him preaching and said, “this is the Christ.”

But others doubted and said,

Since Jesus was raised in Nazareth, they considered him a Galileean, but Jesus was actually born in Bethlehem because of the Census.

4. The Star

Back when Israel was wandering the wilderness they came across an enemy king.

While they rested in a valley near his kingdom, Balaak sought a sorcerer who could put a curse on them.

What he got instead was Balaam, a not-always-faithful prophet of God.

God only allowed him to speak when God’s own words were coming out of his mouth.

And this is one of the things he said about Israel:

Numbers 24:17 (ESV)

I see him, but not now;

I behold him, but not near:

a star shall come out of Jacob,

and a scepter shall rise out of Israel;

That word, star, was so interesting to a group of astronomers in Persia around the time of Jesus birth.

They had apparently gotten a hold of some Hebrew scriptures—maybe because Daniel had brought them into the royal libraries when he was the counselor to the king.

They were familiar with this verse, and then they saw a new and strange star that seemed to hover over the land of Israel.

It was such a compelling thing to them that they took the long journey to find out who the new king was going to be.

5. Mourning for the children

Unfortunately, the Bible also predicted the mourning that would happen because of Herod’s jealous anger:

Ramah was the place where Rachael, Jacob’s favorite wife, was buried.

This verse pictures Rachel weeping for “her children,” even though she’s been long dead by Jeremiah’s time.

The context of this verse is a promise to restore God’s people.

It talks about the people coming back to Jerusalem with God saying, “I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you.”

He said the people would come with repentance.

He said, “He who scattered Israel will gather him, and will keep him as a shepherd keeps his flock.”

He talks about the young women rejoicing and dancing over the goodness of the Lord.