Messiah Prophet

Advent

Advent is a season of hopeful waiting

Before the coming of Jesus, the rabbis were all looking for a savior

Someone who would align with the scriptures

And this person would be a king in the line of David: He would sit on David’s throne and reign forever

He would be a savior…Somehow he would be like Joseph and he would save the very people who rejected him

But there is more to what this messiah would look like…

So before we dive into this other idea of what the messiah would be like, I want to dive in a bit to the Birth of Jesus because I just have a feeling that when we look at one of the angles you will see the old testament story a little easier…

And before we get to the text…I just want to give you the back story

History:

In 37 BCE, so that Rome would finally have control over Jerusalem and the Israelites, Rome installed this leader Herod as the “king of the Jews.” 

Since the Jews didn’t see him as a king, they had to give Herod a legion of armies so that he could conquer Israel.  It took Herod 3 years to conquer Israel. That three-year campaign ended with one of the most atrocious brutal things ever done.  It ended in Jerusalem, the walls were breeched and the Romans massacred the people…this is how Herod king of the Jews came to power.

Herod was a Psycho,  he was crazy and he would do anything to stay in power.

Herod had many wives some sources say ten wives…

His favorite wife was Mariamne. There is a legend that Herod would leave on trips to Rome and his standing order always was that if Herod did not come back alive then to kill Mariamne because he knew that it would be her behind the murder. 

That never happened, because Herod would end up doing it himself: In a fit of jealously he killed Merriam, and not only did he kill her but he killed her father, her mother, his three favorite sons…. he drowned the  high priests in his water cistern…

There were a couple of military leaders who questioned the wisdom of Herod killing his favorite sons.  They were killed along with 300 of their fellow officers, and family members.

Herod was so worried about whether or not there would be mourning on the day of his death that he gathered the politically and socially elite into a stadium in Jericho and had archers open fire and slaughter everyone simply so that there would be mourning on the day of his death, even if it wasn’t for him, Psycho may not be a strong enough word for him…Fortunately after Herod died this was never carried out….

So not only did he do all of this stuff  but he had networks of spies that worked for him…Which functioned like secret police.  It might have felt like living in a communist country under Herod

He also had such a big ego and he was such a brown noser to Cesar, that he totally impoverished the Jewish people because he had to pay for all of the things that he was building…

He built an entire city in tribute to Cesar and named it Caesarea

He built monuments and temples and everything he did for Cesar.  The largest port in the world was in Athens, Herod decided that is not big enough and builds a port in Caesarea that is twice as large as the one in Athens, they were pouring concrete underwater which was cutting edge technology.  The entire city was covered in marble

Herod built temples and fortresses

There was this rock Plateau called Masada, it is commonly thought that Masada is where David hung out when he was on the run from Saul

Masada means fortress

So what Herod does is he says if your greatest king David had to live here in poverty and in hiding, I’m going to live here in luxury, and he had this massive fortress built, he had a cistern that held 10.5million gallons of water.  This was all in the middle of the dessert, right by the dead sea…

So here Herod is saying, I’m your greatest king, if your greatest king lived here in poverty then I will live here in luxury. 

There were even more building projects

Herod built this stadium so far we’ve unearthed 390,000 seats, anyone know how big the Golden One Center is? 17,608 it was over 20x larger than the Golden One Center

He tried to win back the favor of the Jews by rebuilding the temple, they used 2.3 million stones weighing thousands of tons each… and it was this huge glorious temple…

A little later the disciples are walking with Jesus and they say, wow isn’t this temple great and Jesus says, I tell you one stone will not stand on the other”…That was a huge statement.  

  Herod decided that he wanted a fortress if the people ever revolted against him.  He called it the Herodian…

Here is a picture of me standing on top Herodian in 2013

Herod decided his fortress should be on top of a mountain, the problem was that there wasn’t any mountains near by.  So Herod dug up the surrounding hills and had the dirt moved to the exact spot where he wanted his fortress….It was strategically magnificent…You could see the dead sea on one side

Here is a picture of me standing on top of it in 2013…Its still there and many other kings used it as a fortress

To give you an idea of how big the structure was…on top of the mountain they made, there they built what is basically a castle…

So remember something that Jesus said….When he was Jesus standing on the Mount of Olives you could see Herodian, so when he says, I tell you… if you have faith as small as a mustard seed you can tell a mountain to go and toss itself in the sea. 

As to say Herod did this through bruit force and slave labor, I’m telling you that you that through faith you can do much greater things than this!

So Trust me, we can go on here for a good long while

But this is the context that Jesus is born into

Lets look at Matthew 2

Matthew 2:1–12 NIV

After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.” When King Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him. When he had called together all the people’s chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Messiah was to be born. “In Bethlehem in Judea,” they replied, “for this is what the prophet has written: “ ‘But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for out of you will come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel.’” Then Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared. He sent them to Bethlehem and said, “Go and search carefully for the child. As soon as you find him, report to me, so that I too may go and worship him.” After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen when it rose went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they were overjoyed. On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route.

Do you see how a little bit of history makes this scripture come alive

When the text says that king herod was disturbed and all of Jerusalem with him…

Do you get why all of Jerusalem would be disturbed? King Herod was a wild card, you don’t know what a king Herod will do!

Since Jesus was born the powers of Darkness were trying to take him out

When Herod tells the Magi to go and find Jesus so that he can worship that new king…

That is absolutely the last thing that Herod will do…Herod is completely power hungry. He murders people without thinking about it.

The Magi were even warned in a dream not to go back to Herod because he was duplicitous

There is an impotrant point here:

The Herod’s of this world build their kingdom through brute force while Jesus builds his kingdom though faith

This is an impotrant point because Herod is just one of many tyranical leaders in the Bible..He sort of follows a type…

They all try to build their kingdoms on burte force whereas Jesus’ kingdom is one of trusting God…

Matthew 2:13–16 NIV

When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. “Get up,” he said, “take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.” So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: “Out of Egypt I called my son.” When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi.

There is Herod’s real character…In a desperate attempt to kill Jesus before he could become a threat, he kills all the boys who were two years old and younger who were born in Bethlehem…

Herod’s true colors are shown

and then what Matthew wants us to know is that this child who is born is now entering into a typology

In other words…This child is going to follow a patters of Israel’s greatest prophet

Because he quotes the prophesy from Hosea

“Out of Egypt I called my son”

So Jesus will be taken down to Egypt…Really just to come out of Egypt…

Think about that…God takes Jesus to egypt…yes to protect him from Herod but also…Just to exit egypt….God is taking his son into the Moses story…

And really he will enter into the story of all of Israel

And a few years after this moment

The parents of Jesus would hear again from an Angel of the Lord while they lived in Egypt and they would take Jesus home…

The origin story of Jesus is the same origin story of Moses

Exodus 1:15–18 NIV

The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, whose names were Shiphrah and Puah, “When you are helping the Hebrew women during childbirth on the delivery stool, if you see that the baby is a boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, let her live.” The midwives, however, feared God and did not do what the king of Egypt had told them to do; they let the boys live. Then the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and asked them, “Why have you done this? Why have you let the boys live?”

See Herod is just another Pharoah

And Jesus gets the same exact treatment as Moses

Both Pharoah and Herod are unsuccessful at stopping their targets

And both of these children will change the world

I guess to hi-light the idea that Jesus will be like a Moses character

Jesus spends 40 days in the desert fasting and then will go re-teach the 10 commandments in their truest form, its called the sermon on the mount…

This is the beginning of the life of the messiah and the question has to be why?

Well Remember for the last two weeks I have been telling you that people have been looking for something in a messiah…

He has to be kingly like David, in fact he has to be a physical descendent

He is going to be something of a Savior like Joseph…He is going to save those who rejected him

But also…he has to be like Moses too….Why?

Well it is what Moses told us to look for!

Deuteronomy 18:15 NIV

The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your fellow Israelites. You must listen to him.

Deuteronomy 18:18 NIV

I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their fellow Israelites, and I will put my words in his mouth. He will tell them everything I command him.

Moses told Israel to be looking for someone like him who would be a prophet.

Someone who would enter into the story of Israel and do the things that Moses would do but in all of its fullness

I was asking myself this week…Why do I have the urge to share all of this with you, why does this even matter to you.

And I think though this entire christmas series one of the big points I want to make is this:

God plays the long game while we play the short game

In our human frailty We humans are definitely not thinking about what will happen 2,000 years from now let alone 50 years from now …Many of you are just wondering how your going to make the next two weeks work

Christmas reminds us that God has all of human history in his hands and he is playing the long game

Look this is really what the Bible show

He set up some guy named David to be king and says a new king will come from that line

He sets up Joseph…sends him to a foreign land for about 28 years to suffer and then be a savior of his people…and the rabbis are looking for a new Joseph

He brings this great deliverer and says guess what someone will come who is like Israel’s greatest deliverer

and the people in Jesus day couldn’t imagine that they would all come together in one person! That just doesn’t make sense, it doesn’t compute!

This year we started by talking about ONE Matters..>We made t-shirts that says One matters because we believe that when you focus on the one then you focus on God’s long game

It reminded me about a facebook story that someone sent me, I fact checked it to make sure it was true

And it turns out it is 100% true

There was an old tent revival preacher named Mordecai Ham preaching in Charlotte, North Carolina, when two 14-year-old boys passed by the tent…

hearing the preacher speak on the love of God, they stopped to look, but there were no seats. As they began to walk away, an usher a man whose name history never recorded ran after them.

He grabbed one boy’s hand and said, “We’ll find two seats for you.” He made room. He sat them down.

Those two boys gave their lives to Christ that night. One grew up to be Billy Graham, who preached the gospel to more people than anyone in history. The other was Grady Wilson, who became Billy’s right hand, organizing crusades that reached millions.

The hero of the story is not whoever was preaching that night…It was that usher who saw two lost kids and ran after them…That usher was playing the short game…Just get these two kids in seats

But God always has the long game in view…

Think about it: We just inherently play the short game, and that is okay, we are finite human…

But God is always playing the long game

So I think this is one of the things that Christmas reveals…That God has a long redemptive purpose of humanity in his view…

He has the long game in view…You go after the one! You seek after the lost and even though that is inherently a short game mentality…God has their whole life in view and their kids and their kids, kids…When you go after the one, you might not just be affecting a life but a generation of lives!

I love how God takes our short game and uses it in the long game

This is basically a long way of me saying, God had a redemptive purpose for you and a plan for your life

and when you honor jesus with your life and live a life dedicated to him then somehow he uses that for the long game…You might not ever know how but he does use it!

God takes our small obedience and weaves it into his eternal story

Just keep saying Yes to Jesus and watch what happens!

So let’s keep moving here: Jesus was the new and greater moses and it shows up in every single area of his ministry…and I want to hi light one thing but before I do I just have a little list of stuff I can spend a whole series on comparing the two

The Baptism of Jesus connects with crossing the crossing of the red sea

When Moses lifts the snake up to save people from snake bites Jesus says in John 3 that that is really about him

Jesus calls himself the bread of life then miraculously feeds 5000 people reenacting God feeding Israel with mana

Jesus constantly goes up to a mountain to pray…Moses goes up to siani

But the biggest and the last thing that I want to show you that connects Jesus and moses is this

When Israel blows it…

I mean after they get the 10 commandments

After they get the command for how they will build the tabernacle and how they will worship God

Moses comes down from the mountain and finds them engaging in idolatry

He finds them dancing and partying around a golden calf

God is angry with this and wants to blot them out what

Moses advocates for Israel

Exodus 32:30–34 NIV

The next day Moses said to the people, “You have committed a great sin. But now I will go up to the Lord; perhaps I can make atonement for your sin.” So Moses went back to the Lord and said, “Oh, what a great sin these people have committed! They have made themselves gods of gold. But now, please forgive their sin—but if not, then blot me out of the book you have written.” The Lord replied to Moses, “Whoever has sinned against me I will blot out of my book. Now go, lead the people to the place I spoke of, and my angel will go before you. However, when the time comes for me to punish, I will punish them for their sin.”

So what Moses does and don’t miss this

He offers God an exchange

God don’t kill them

Take my life for their life!

God I am their leader take me instead!

But God says no I will hold everyone accountable for their own sin

and I wonder if Moses ever thinks…man if everyone is accountable for their own sin how can they ever be righteous before God

How could they ever stand before God as a whole person?

But see Moses wasn’t perfect…He couldn't offer his life for their lives…

He was a flawed person…Moses killed a man! He was slow to obey God

But even in how flawed he was he stands up before God and says take my life for your life

and he couldn't do it…But Jesus who actually did live a blameless life

Dies on the cross and the offer of jesus is to take his perfection and he will take your sin so that you can stand before God righteous…

Infant what does scripture tell us Jesus is doing right now?

The same thing that moses trued to do but was unsuccessful!

What moses did for the Israelites on Saini, Jesus is doing for us in heaven

Jesus is advocating for us right now

1 John 2:1 NIV

My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One.

See On that first christmas Mary gives birth to a new and greater moses

Not only would Jesus deliver his people from the oppression of sin

But unlike Moses…Moses went to offer his life and God basically said…No you’re not worthy

But jesus would be born…and he would offer his life…and this time he was worthy and he would do what Moses couldn’t do…

As Moses interceded for Israel on the mountain, Jesus advocates for us in heaven.

See what John is writing to his church are instructions on how to live in holiness…Which is essentially relationship with God

and he says I don’t want you to sin…But if you do…We have the one who conquered death on our side

You guys the birth of Jesus wasn’t a silent night and a holy night…

The birth of Jesus is an absolute revolution where he enters into all of these stories that came before him to show you the long view of God’s redemptive purposes

Response

Don’t trust the Herod’s of this world

Herod is everything we think power should look like.

Jesus is everything God says power actually is.

The Herod’s of this world Build monuments to themselves

whereas Jesus builds his house in you…Its actually one of my favorite verses from the book of John

John 14:23 Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them

I love that the son of God was born as a liter counter revolution to the Herod’s of this world!

2. The Long Game

That’s Advent theology:

Waiting

Trusting

Saying yes without seeing the outcome

God plays the long game

Moses

David

Joseph

Jesus

The unnamed usher

God takes our small obedience and weaves it into His eternal story.

One Matters….When I go after the one then you can trust God to multiply what you can not see

Because God’s long game often begins with one faithful moment.

3. I can trust Jesus to advocate for me when I fail.

Like Moses interceded for Israel, Jesus intercedes for me—right now.

So why Does God do this?

why does God set up these people for a few thousand years

David?

Joseph?

Moses?

Because when he sends his son he wants everyone to recognize him…Because that is the way to new life

because through Jesus that is the only way to find forgiveness

Through Jesus that is the only way to wholeness

Through Jesus that is the only way to life that is really life

4. Lastly this is kind of an abstract point…But when you realize that Jesus is the fulfillment of every hope and every promise then you can acvtually begin to have hope again