Jesus: God Himself

Introduction

Have you ever noticed that the way you prepare your house for a guest changes depending on who you’re expecting? The closer you are to the person who’s coming, the less you clean and organize when you know they’re coming to visit. So in a way you should probably take it as a compliment if you visit someone and their house is a mess, right? Now imagine if you heard that King Charles was coming over for a cup of tea. I imagine that your house would probably be cleaner than it’s ever been before, even today in a cultural context that doesn’t really respect royalty the same way that people in the past did.

What if God Himself said that He was going to come visit you? What then? Well this is exactly the scenario that the Israelites found themselves in. Today we return to our Finding Jesus in the Old Testament Series by looking at three short prophecies all connected by their common message: God Himself is coming to Jerusalem.

For those who may have forgotten or never knew, in this series we’ve been looking at ways that we can find Jesus in the Bible in the Old Testament, hundreds and sometimes thousands of years before He was born in the flesh. The three ways we find Jesus in the Old Testament are through Types: People or things that in some way foreshadow who Jesus would be, Christophanies, in person appearances of Christ before the incarnation and in today’s case Prophecies, predictions made in inspired Scripture about the coming Messiah who we now know is Jesus Christ.

Now when it comes to Prophecies there are sort of different levels of what I will call “Messianic Clarity.” There are some prophecies that are so clearly about Messiah, and that Jewish people before the coming of Jesus even already identified as being Messianic and that are so clearly fulfilled by Jesus that it just makes you want to yell out “How did they not see it!” Then there are passages like today’s. In the case of today’s Scriptures while we do have clear fulfillment by Jesus in the New Testament I think Jewish readers in the time before Christ can be forgiven for not seeing this as Messianic.

I think that when it comes to the fact of Jesus’ diety, God really played His cards close to the chest so to speak. While we knew the Messiah’s lineage, where He would be born, how He would die and many other things, it’s only after Jesus came that we can see that all along the Messiah was and is God Himself born in flesh. Why would God do this? Well perhaps in His wisdom God knew that any Prophet of Israel who declared the incarnation in plain terms would probably be rejected as a Heretic apart from the compelling evidence of Jesus’ life death and resurrection. In any case, while cloaked in mystery God still made sure to leave clues in the Old Testament to ensure we knew that it was always His plan to come down personally to rescue His people. So we see from our Three Prophecies about Jesus for today:

Prepare the Way for Yahweh (Isaiah 40:3)

God’s Return to Jerusalem (Zechariah 2:10)

He Will Be Called Immanuel (Isaiah 7:14)

Prepare the Way of the LORD

So you could be forgiven for being confused at the first Scripture for today, which is Isaiah 40:3

Isaiah 40:3 CSB

A voice of one crying out: Prepare the way of the Lord in the wilderness; make a straight highway for our God in the desert.

You may be saying to yourself, wait, isn’t this a sermon about prophecies that describe Jesus being God incarnate? This isn’t even about Jesus it’s about John the Baptist. And you would be right. In all four of the gospels this passage is quoted as being fulfilled by John the Baptist, as confirmation of Jesus’ Messianic claim by proxy. For example Matthew 3:3

Matthew 3:3 CSB

For he is the one spoken of through the prophet Isaiah, who said: A voice of one crying out in the wilderness: Prepare the way for the Lord; make his paths straight!

But one aspect of this verse that is often overlooked is who exactly John the Baptist is making way for. It seems obvious in the context of the gospels that the “Lord” that John is making the way for is Jesus, the Messiah. And the Greek version of the Isaiah passage is fairly uncontroversial used this way. The word for Lord being κυριος which means “Lord, Master, or Sir” and was the way you would respectfully address someone with authority over you or a higher position of authority.

The real ssignifance of this is found in the Hebrew in the actual book of Isaiah. You may not know this, it was a while into my own Christian Journey that I discovered it, but every time the Old Testament says “LORD” with all capitals, that’s an english translation of the divine name, YHWH. You see Jewish Scribes out of a fear of unintentionally using the name in vain would avoid writing it down so no one would read it aloud by accident, usually substituting the word Adonai (Lord) instead, and English translations continued this trend by translating it as LORD with all capitals instead of transliterating it as Yahweh, which is our best guess as to how it was pronounced. Hence why most translations today follow this practice. To be fair the New Testament writers under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit also used the word Lord instead of the divine name, so that seems fair.

Anyway, the point of the matter is that the original text of Isaiah is predicting that the voice of one crying out will be preparing the way not just for Messiah, but for God Himself so by simply taking these words of Isaiah and applying the word Lord to Jesus the gospel writers are declaring that Jesus is in fact God in the flesh.

Of course Isaiah’s original readers would likely not have thought, “He’s saying a person will come to announce the Messiah, who will be God Himself,” but rather that Isaiah was predicting a prophet that would announce the Lord’s return to glory in Israel. It’s only after the first coming of Jesus and the inspired New Testament Scriptures that we can see that this was always intended to refer to the divine Son of God, Jesus our Lord.

This of course means that all four gospels contain a very clear claim that Jesus is God, despite the claims by some that only later writings claim that Jesus is divine. Just a quick apologetics moment for you guys there.

I Am Coming

Now for prophecy number 2, who is ready for a quick ancient Israel history lesson? We’ve talked about some of this before, but I think a refresher will really put the next prophecy in context. Remember when God rescued the Isrealites from Egyptian oppression and made them into a nation? Well while they were still in the wilderness God told them to build a tabernacle and gave them specific instructions on what it should look like. After they built it exactly as God had instructed them, God descended on the tabernacle and His special presence was there with the people. Of course we know theologically that God is present everywhere, but there was something special and exclusive about God’s glory dwelling in the midst of His chosen people.

Fast forward to the time of Solomon, when the Temple is built as a permenant home for the worship of God to replace the temporary moveable Tabernacle. When Solomon finished the temple again the glorious presence of God descended in a visible way so that the Israelites could see the presence of God dwelling in their midts.

Then comes tragedy. After years of breaking God’s covenant God finally gives them the conditions of the covenant that they had agreed to. That if they broke the covenant they would lose their land. We read of a tragic scene in Ezekiel Chapter 10. After this the nation is conquered and many are taken away into exile. It is in this context that we read:

Zechariah 2:10–11 CSB

“Daughter Zion, shout for joy and be glad, for I am coming to dwell among you”—this is the Lord’s declaration. “Many nations will join themselves to the Lord on that day and become my people. I will dwell among you, and you will know that the Lord of Armies has sent me to you.

So if you were a Jewish person living in the time of Zechariah, what would you be picturing when you hear these words? God is assuring you that He will come and dwell in Jerusalem again some day. Even more, the word translated as “dwell” in this verse is the verbal version of the noun translated as tabernacle. What you wouldn’t expect is what God actually did to fulfill this passage.

For its fulfillment let’s turn to John 1:14

John 1:14 CSB

The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. We observed his glory, the glory as the one and only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

And in case there was any doubt, the word translated as “dwelt” in John 1:14 is a greek verb which means to dwell in tents or “tabernacle.” Seriously, how cool is that? It’s all connected people. God wrote the Bible and He made sure His fingerprints were all over it.

The Bible is really cool you guys.

Anyway, so we have here yet another passage testifying after the fact that Jesus is God Himself come to dwell among us. Just like the previous one it’s a mysterious passage until you see the fulfillment, but once you see it, it becomes obvious once more that this was always part of God’s plan. Even still we are only living in a partical fulfillment of this promise. One day in the New Heavens and the New Earth we will be living out the combined hopes of the Old and New Covenants, God’s glory dwelling in Jerusalem in the person of Jesus Christ of Nazareth.

We are living in the fulfillment of verse eleven, where many nations (same Hebrew word as Gentiles) will join themselves to the Lord and become His people. Raise your hand if you are a physical descendant of Abraham? That’s what I thought. Everyone in this building is a gentile who through Christ has come to worship the God of Israel, and the same can be said of more than a third of the entire world. That’s miraculous on its own despite the implications of Godhood it lends to the person of Jesus.

Name Him Immanuel

What’s in a name? Would a rose by any other name smell as sweet? We’ve all heard the quote. Of course we don’t name people these days the way that people used to. And when I say used to I don’t mean decades ago, I mean millenia ago. In the modern era we mostly use names that are already recognized names that we like the sound of. Even in the time of Jesus most people were named after their ancestors instead of unique names. That’s why there’s a bunch of Judas’, Simon’s, Mary’s and John’s. These names had to come from somewhere though, and in most cases they were just other words or multiple words put together. We see this all over the Old Testament. In some cases people are given a name by God Himself. Our final prophecy of the day is an instance where God is giving both a prophecy and a name.

Isaiah 7:14 CSB

Therefore, the Lord himself will give you a sign: See, the virgin will conceive, have a son, and name him Immanuel.

Familiar, right? We hear this prophecy quoted a lot around Christmas time. And for good reason, Matthew includes this prophecy in His birth narrative of Jesus in Matthew 1:22-23

Matthew 1:22–23 CSB

Now all this took place to fulfill what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet: See, the virgin will become pregnant and give birth to a son, and they will name him Immanuel, which is translated “God is with us.”

A beautiful prophecy about the virgin birth with a bit of the incarnation for good measure. Well what if I told you that this is actually a fairly controversial passage in scholarly and/or skeptic circles? Well if you zoom out in Isaiah chapter 7 and get a bit more context, a practice which I encourage in all cases by the way, things can get a little more confusing. Before this passage King Ahaz of Judah was under pressure from Israel and Aram to join their coalition against Assyria, and when he refused them they were coming to attack him. So Isaiah has come to tell Ahaz to turn to God for help and that God is on their side. It is in this context that we read Isaiah 7:10-17

Isaiah 7:10–17 CSB

Then the Lord spoke again to Ahaz: “Ask for a sign from the Lord your God—it can be as deep as Sheol or as high as heaven.” But Ahaz replied, “I will not ask. I will not test the Lord.” Isaiah said, “Listen, house of David! Is it not enough for you to try the patience of men? Will you also try the patience of my God? Therefore, the Lord himself will give you a sign: See, the virgin will conceive, have a son, and name him Immanuel. By the time he learns to reject what is bad and choose what is good, he will be eating curds and honey. For before the boy knows to reject what is bad and choose what is good, the land of the two kings you dread will be abandoned. The Lord will bring on you, your people, and your father’s house such a time as has never been since Ephraim separated from Judah: He will bring the king of Assyria.”

You may have noticed that it seems an awful lot like Isaiah is talking about something that was about to happen, not something that was going to happen in hundreds of years. So why do we Christians say that this verse is a prophecy about Jesus? Well in prophecy we have what is sometimes called a “double fulfillment.” Bear with me here. The basic idea is that often times there will be a prophecy in the Old Testament that is fulfilled in the time of the Old Testament, but only partially. Perhaps there was a woman who was a virgin at the time of Isaiah’s speaking who gave birth soon after, thus fulfilling this prophecy because those two kings fell shortly afterwards, and so the child would have been as young as the prophecy suggests. But Scripture leaves us with this prophecy sort of hanging there only with the implication of present fulfillment. It’s not until we get to the gospels that we see what was truly meant.

This is the sort of thing we see all the time in the prophets. This is why Jewish rabbis before Jesus came started theorizing about a Messiah who would come, and writing long lists of Scriptures they supposed were about him. There’s this clear feeling you get all the time reading the Old Testament that there’s something more coming, there’s this expectation of a future fulfillment.

Do you guys remember those “magic eye” optical illustions? The ones that at first glance look like nothing but then when you stare at them and refocus your eyes just right you see a 3d image? And once you see it you have to sort of shake your head and close your eyes to stop seeing it.

Messianic prophecy is sort of like this. You stare at it and stare at it and it doesn’t add up until Jesus comes on the scene and it all clicks. Prophecy after prophecy falls in a line of dominoes until it’s simply undeniable: Jesus was always God’s plan. Now why center all of human history on one man? Because He’s not just a man. He is the God Man. Two natures in one substance, God in every sense of the word and Man in every sense of the word and yet without sin.

So the name Immanuel comes to be not just a reassuring reminder that God is on our side, but a literal description of the one who is to come. God. With. Us.

It’s stuff like this that makes us say that the Scriptures are “self authenticating” who else but God could have over thousands of years by the pens of dozens of writers in a myriad of formats and contexts create such an incredibly cohesive message of hope and salvation for all who will receive it.

Conclusion

Maybe this is a silly question, but it’s important to ask ourselves at the end of sermons like this one: why does this all matter? Sure it’s all scriptural and true, but how does knowing that Jesus is God and that the Old Testament backs up His diety change our lives?

Well there’s a few reasons why Jesus’ divinity is absolutely essential to Christianity. First of all, if we want to worship God in truth we need to know who He truly is. So if we deny that Jesus is God when God’s Word says that He is we are worshipping a false image of God that we’ve made, not the true God who we claim to worship. Second, without the incarnation the cross is either meaningless or barbaric.

This is because no mere man can do what Jesus did on the cross. If I were to pray to God, “lay all their sins on me” and then die, would that save mankind? No. Because I myself am a sinful man. I am not Holy or Righteous enough to be a fair exchange for the sinfulness of mankind. And if God demanded the sacrifice of someone else to pay the penalty for sin than He would be unjust, but because Jesus is God, God was paying the penalty for our sins HIMSELF.

Let’s close with a famous illustration of that last point. I found this version of the illustration on Cru.org.

Let’s say you are driving home this weekend and you are cruising. You’re going say, 105 mph. You’re just flying. You get busted, the cop has you on radar and you’re done. They impound your car, and bring you straight to the courthouse to face the judge. Well the good news is that the county you got busted in just happens to be the county in which your dad is the judge. So you’re thinking that you’re golden. He loves you, he’ll let you off, everything will be fine. But just as you are entering the courthouse, you remember that your dad is a really good judge. He never punishes the innocent. He always punishes the guilty. He is a good and just judge. Now you’re a little nervous. Which is going to win out, his love or his justice? He’s your dad and he loves you so he’ll want to do good to you. But he’s a good and just judge and therefore he’ll want to follow the law and render a just verdict.

You stand before your dad the judge and he says to you, “Son, this officer says you were going 50 mph over the speed limit. How do you plead.” You say “guilty,” because you are guilty.So he looks at you and says, “That will be $500 or a week in jail. Guilty as charged.” And he bangs down the gavel. Well you don’t have any money, so the bailiff comes to take you away so you can start serving your time, when your dad, the judge stands up and says, “Wait a minute, bring him back here.” Then he stands up, takes off his robe and walks down from behind the bench. Then he reaches into his coat pocket, takes out his checkbook and writes the court a check for $500, the exact amount of your fine. Then he offers it to you. What’s going on here is this; he is just, so he declares you guilty, since you are. And he demands that a penalty be paid. But he loves you, and so he has determined to pay that penalty himself, on your behalf. Now as he stands there offering you the check, what do you need to do?

You can accept his payment on your behalf, or for whatever reason you can reject it. If there are two things primarily true about God they are that He is loving and He is just. He loves you, He always has. He cannot love you more and will not love you less. He loves you. And He is just. He always renders a just verdict. He always does the right thing. Those two things put Him in an interesting situation when it comes to us, because every one of us has broken His laws. We are guilty before Him. So which would win out? His love, which would want to let us off, or His justice that demands a penalty be paid? The Bible says that He declared us guilty, because we are, and demanded that a penalty be paid. Then He left heaven, came to earth, became a man, and died to pay our penalty. See, we didn’t owe a $500 penalty, so He didn’t just write a check. The Bible says that sin earns us a death penalty, so He died to pay that. Then He comes to us to offer His life on our behalf. Just like your dad with the check He stands before you and says, “I’ll take the blame for every rotten thing you’ve ever done, and give you credit, for my perfect life. All you need to do is accept it.”