Jesus the CHRIST

Matthew 16:16 ESV

Simon Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

“I believe in Jesus CHRIST, His only Son, our Lord...”

We continue with the Second Article of the Apostles Creed today by looking at the OFFICES of Christ.

When we say “Jesus is the Christ” what do we mean? Well, for one, it is not His last Name. Jesus’ earthly last name would have been Jesus Ben Joseph, as his earthly step father was named Joseph. “Christ” is often used as a name when we curse, swear, use satanic arts, lie and deceive by His Name. But actually, it is not a name at all. It is a title. In Greek the Title Christ means “the Anointed One.” The Hebrew word for this same title is MESSIAH. So, in and of itself, to say “Jesus Christ” is actually a creedal statement. It means “Jesus is the Messiah.” That is a profound confession of faith. Jews have no problem with the person of Jesus, but don’t ya go calling Him “Christ” because they do not believe that He is the Messiah. We do. Jesus, Son of God and Son of Man is the fulfillment of all of the Old Testament Prophecies; He is the anointed one.

So, what does it mean that He is anointed? That is the topic of today’s sermon.

Our outline has 4 points. They all begin with the letter “P”. Jesus is the Messiah PROMISED of old. Jesus is Anointed as our Prophet. Jesus is Anointed as our Priest. And Jesus is Anointed as our Potentate, another word for King.

We will

PROMISED

First, Jesus is the Promised Messiah. After Adam and Eve sin in the Garden, God makes them a cryptic promise:

Genesis 3:15 ESV

I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”

He speaks of her Offspring. Yes, she would have many offspring. She is your ultimate mother, beloved. From Adam and Eve came all human life. But here, God is not speaking of all of Eve’s offspring. He speaks of someone specific: This offspring would crush the head of the serpent, even as his heel is bruised. In other words, God is speaking about a very specific person who would come to undo the curse that Adam and Eve inflicted upon us through their disobedience, and who would ultimately undo and destroy the power of death and the devil.

This is a promise of a Messiah.

Throughout the Old Testament the promise grows. It grows through Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. It continues to blossom with Moses and Israel. The Prophets begin to clarify who this Messiah would be and what He would do.

Many missed the mark. Israel sometimes thought that Messiah would be their nation. Some thought that the Messiah was a mighty warrior who would come and deliver them from all of the earthly oppression that Israel suffered: From the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Romans, and others. He would come as a mighty soldier against whom none of the adversaries could stand. The Jewish people still hold such a view today. So do more than a few Christians, who believe that when God speaks of Israel, He speaks of the land and its people of today. They miss entirely what Paul declares in , and 11, that Israel is now God’s “New Israel”, which is the Church. You’re in it. The mark of Israel no longer is circumcision, but a cross marked on your forehead and on your heart in Baptism.

When the time had fully come, Jesus is born in Bethlehem. Last week we learned that the importance is not in His birthday, but in God taking on human flesh and becoming a man in the Incarnation. The Promised Anointed one could have come as a king, but chose a mother’s womb eternal life to bring.

We believe, teach and Confess that Jesus is the Messiah. He is the Christ. He is the Anointed One.

At the beginning of Jesus’ earthly Ministry, we see the confirmation of this three-fold anointing. He is Baptized in the Jordan River by John the Baptist where your sin was washed upon Him. Bearing your sin, He takes it all the way to the Cross.

Jesus is anointed into three Offices: Our Prophet, Our Priest and our Potentate. The way we normally say this is our “Prophet, Priest and King.”

PROPHET

Jesus, the Christ, is anointed as our Prophet.

Prophets in the Bible have two functions: To FORTHTELL and to FORETELL. Usually people jump right to the “FORETELLING” part, not realizing that the main calling of a Prophet is to “FORTHTELL”. FORTHTELLING means PREACHING. Preaching God’s Law, and Preaching God’s Gospel. If you read through all of the Prophets, both major and minor, the majority of times that they speak, they are talking about the “here and now” of the Children of Israel to whom they are preaching. Almost all of them have a strong call to repentance. They speak of how sin will destroy their nation and their hope. They also grant wonderful hope to the Children of Israel: Hope for their return from exile, Hope in recovery after war, and the wonderful hope of forgiveness that God Himself grants.

This is the identical purpose of sermons in Church today. Through His Word, God confronts us in our sin, and grants us His grace and forgiveness in Christ Alone, by Grace alone, through faith in Christ alone.

But Prophets also did foretell. Some prophesied about immediate things, such as the imminent fall of kings and kingdoms, with these things occurring within 24 hours of speaking them. Many spoke of the “Day of the Lord”, the Old Testament way to say “Judgment Day.” All of the imagery in the Revelation comes from the Old Testament Prophets. John says nothing new there.

Knowing this, we look to Jesus as our Prophet. Jesus forthtells. He preaches. He confronts the hypocrisy of the Pharisees. He preaches against the sins of hatred, lust, murder, adultery, divorce, greed, envy. He points out our weaknesses, and He confronts us with our sin. Because He did this in His time, He was hated and then crucified for us.

But that is why He also preached about God’s love, God’s mercy, God’s Grace, God’s Promises. It was on the Cross that the devil though he had silenced this Prophet, whose words He saw to be his own undoing. But the devil couldn’t do it. Even in death, Jesus descends into hell and proclaims His victory and tells the devil that his days are numbered. And on that Cross the devil nipped Jesus’ heel, but Jesus crushed his damnable head. He is reserved for fire on the last day, though now he continues to prowl the earth like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.

Jesus foretells. In the case of each of the Prophets, their foretelling came by God revealing to them His plan for the Future. Jesus, being God, knows all things. And so He both warns of the Last Day, for those still in their sin, those who do not have the robe of faith given in Baptism, will stand naked before Him as He comes as judge, and will go the way of all of the spiritually naked, blind, deaf and dead people that walk about us even today as zombies. “Depart from me.” You have been warned.

“But to those who received Him, He gave the right to

John 1:12–13 ESV

But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

John 1:

He gives signs to show that His coming is near, signs given to all of the ages and to us, signs that always demand us to be ready for His return. And we are made ready simply by believing in Jesus and being sanctified by Him.

Jesus is anointed our Prophet.

PRIEST

Jesus is anointed as our Priest.

Priests performed two functions as well.

First, they were the intermediaries between God and man. They were the ones who pleaded the people’s case before God in heaven. They were the ones who interceded for the people of God by praying for them. Second, they offered sacrifices for the sins of the people.

Sometimes today, people confuse the office of priest with that of Pastor. In the Roman Catholic Church, for instance, the priest, along with other “religious” are thought to be on a higher spiritual plain than the lay people. Something was given to them in ordination that made them better, more holy, more able to talk to God. They become the go-between between the laity and God Himself. So, if you want your prayers to be truly heard, you ask the priest to pray for you. If you want your loved one to be released from Purgatory, you ask the priest to say a mass for you. Yes, you can pray yourself, but it works better if the priest does it for you.

Understand, this is the Old Testament way. When Jesus died, He ripped the Temple curtain in half. The priesthood was done at that point. You don’t need an intermediary to go to the Father in heaven besides Jesus. This is our issue with the intercession of the Saints as well.

Very often, people ask me to pray for them. I am glad to do it. But if that is because they think that my prayers are more connected to the Lord than their own,, then we have a problem. In the Lutheran Church, pastors pray. We pray during Church. We pray for our people and their lives each day. But it is wholly different than when people ask a priest to pray for them. This is a difference between the Lutheran Church and the Roman Church. The Office of Pastor is indeed a holy calling, but so is your vocation! St. Peter writes,

1 Peter 2:9 ESV

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

We call this the priesthood of all believers. You can pray for others and yourselves just as well as I can.

The Priest offered sacrifices for the people

Leviticus 4:32–35 ESV

“If he brings a lamb as his offering for a sin offering, he shall bring a female without blemish and lay his hand on the head of the sin offering and kill it for a sin offering in the place where they kill the burnt offering. Then the priest shall take some of the blood of the sin offering with his finger and put it on the horns of the altar of burnt offering and pour out all the rest of its blood at the base of the altar. And all its fat he shall remove as the fat of the lamb is removed from the sacrifice of peace offerings, and the priest shall burn it on the altar, on top of the Lord’s food offerings. And the priest shall make atonement for him for the sin which he has committed, and he shall be forgiven.

This was the second main function as a priest. Sacrifices were offered for thanksgiving, praise and forgiveness by the priest. Some were offered for specific sins. Some were offered for unintentional or unknown sins. Some were offered as worship to the Lord. This was done at the Temple.

One of the main differences between the Temple and Synagogues is that sacrifices are not offered at Synagogues. Synagogues have and had rabbis, the Temple had Priests, or “Cohens”. One question that does come up is that after the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed in AD 70, sacrifices could no longer be offered. Does that mean these people are still in their sins? Yes, it does. God never rescinded His command to sacrifice.

Instead, God Himself offers the Sacrifice. He gives us Jesus. Jesus is both the priest who offers the Sacrifice, and the Lamb that was Sacrificed. Of Him, the Letter to the Hebrews states,

Hebrews 10:5–10 ESV

Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said, “Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body have you prepared for me; in burnt offerings and sin offerings you have taken no pleasure. Then I said, ‘Behold, I have come to do your will, O God, as it is written of me in the scroll of the book.’ ” When he said above, “You have neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices and offerings and burnt offerings and sin offerings” (these are offered according to the law), then he added, “Behold, I have come to do your will.” He does away with the first in order to establish the second. And by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

Jesus is our once-for-all sacrifice that sanctifies you and me.

We do not re-sacrifice Jesus on the altar each time we commune. Once. For. All. If we want to speak of sacrifice in communion, it is the sacrifice of praise that we offer, not the unbloody sacrifice of Jesus again and again.

Christ, our Passover Lamb has been sacrificed. Therefore, let us keep the feast!

Jesus is our Priest.

POTENTATE

Finally, Jesus is our Potentate, our King. The word “Potentate” has the root “Potent” and speaks to Jesus being Almighty, Eternal God.

He is King over three Kingdoms: The Kingdom of Power, which is the World, the Kingdom of Grace, which is the Church, and the Kingdom of Glory, which is heaven.

The Kingdom of Power is the world. Jesus rules over the world today. Some look at the world and see the suffering, they look at things like the shooting in Las Vegas this week and conclude that if Jesus were truly here, He would not have let that happen. But this reflects a misunderstanding of suffering. Suffering is on us. Adam brought it into the world, and you and I continue it by our sin. No one can be blamed but us for the condition of the world. Don’t conclude that Jesus is not here by the evil of the world. And it does grieve His holy heart. There will be a day when it is all over, that Day set by the Father of which no one but the Father knows the Day and the Hour, when all evil will meet its crashing, flaming end.

There are reasons why Jesus allows this world, this Kingdom of Power to go on.

First, simply because He loves us.

Second,

2 Peter 3:4–9 ESV

They will say, “Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation.” For they deliberately overlook this fact, that the heavens existed long ago, and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God, and that by means of these the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished. But by the same word the heavens and earth that now exist are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly. But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.

2 Peter 3:5–9 ESV

For they deliberately overlook this fact, that the heavens existed long ago, and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God, and that by means of these the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished. But by the same word the heavens and earth that now exist are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly. But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.

2 Peter 3

Jesus is the King of the Kingdom of Power.

Jesus is King of the Kingdom of Grace, the Church.

When you were baptized there was a change in you. No longer are you a resident of the earth; you became an alien. Your citizenship changed. No longer is your Father the Father of lies, the devil. Now you are children of the King. Like Jesus said to Pilate, “My Kingdom is not of this world”, neither is yours now. Now you are in the world but not of the world. “I’m but a stranger here, heaven is my home.”

You are God’s New Israel. You are now a part of the Bride of Christ. And Jesus is loving you now through His Word, through the Water, through the Body and through the Blood, and He’s coming back as the Bridegroom to claim His own. You are going to be carried across the threshold of heaven by the Groom with His nail-pierced-hands. That’s your destiny. Those who remain only in the Kingdom of Power have no such expectation. So we also have a mission: To share the Gospel with those who are not yet a part of this wonderful Kingdom of Grace.

Finally, Jesus is the King over the Kingdom of Glory. That’s Heaven. He is the Lamb who will reign forever, before whom we will join with Saints and Angels singing that eternal new song, “worthy is Christ the Lamb who was slain to receive power and riches and glory forever and ever. Amen”

Let us pray:

King of Glory, by Your mercy and compassion, You gave Yourself over to death on the cross to obtain everlasting righteousness, innocence and blessedness for me and all believers. By Your Spirit keep me firm in this faith that I might always live under You in Your Kingdom and serve You in joy and peace even as You have been raised from the dead and live and reign to all eternity. Amen.