Who was Jesus?

Introduction

Who here knew when they were born what they would become when they grew up? Or let me ask a slightly different question, whose parents knew exactly who you would become, what your life was going to become? I can only think of members of the royal family having that sort of knowledge - and even then it wouldn’t be entirely certain! Mary and Joseph were different in this respect to you and I, they had had information about who Jesus was going to be through the angel gabriel and now with Jesus’ presentation at the temple, Luke, the author of this gospel, attempts to paint a picture that reveals Jesus as the saviour for all humanity.

And that is what Candlemas is, a day where Christians celebrate the presentation of Jesus, as a baby, at the Temple in Jerusalem. It is where the true purpose of God coming to earth in the form of the human Jesus Christ, wholly God and wholly man, is first revealed.

It is through the story of the presentation of Christ at the Temple, that the true purpose of God coming to earth in the form of the human Jesus Christ, fully God and fully man, is first revealed.

Who is Jesus?

He is the Messiah, the fulfilment of the Old Testament

Firstly, who is Jesus? The presentation of Jesus at the temple signals the fulfilment of Old Testament prophecy about the coming of the Messiah. We heard in our Old Testament reading today that God was going to send a messenger to prepare the way for the Messiah, that person is revealed earlier in Luke’s gospel to be John the Baptist whose birth was foretold by the angel Gabriel. It may seem insignificant that Gabriel was the angel that Luke associates with giving this revelation but if we look a little deeper we see that it tells us something important about who Jesus is.

In the only other book of the Bible to mention Gabriel is the Book of Daniel where he tells Daniel of the coming of the Messiah. This prophecy occurs in which describes the messiah coming after a time of trial and difficulty which lasts 70 weeks. Now, this is not a literal 70 weeks, this is a figurative number used to make a point. Numbers, just like letters, have meaning for people. We all know that 13 is seen as an unlucky number to many people for example. Well in the Bible the number 7 represents perfection (think the 7 days of creation) and 10 represents completeness (think 10 commandments being the complete law of God) so 70 represents complete perfection and is often used in association with the arrival of the Messiah.

This focus on numbers is not unique to the Old Testament, Luke pays particular attention to time and numbers in the first two chapters of his gospel (the rest of the gospel he’s not so fussy about time) so it must be significant here as well. When we take the time from when John the baptist is conceived, the day that he is revealed to be the herald of the coming Messiah, up to the day that Jesus is presented at the Temple, we have a total of 70 weeks and 1 day. The conception of John the Baptist initiates the 70 weeks of expectation before the arrival of the Messiah, who appears in the temple on the very day (according to Luke’s calculation) after these weeks have come to a conclusion. Jesus’ presentation marks his arrival as the long expected Messiah, foretold in the Old Testament and long awaited by Simeon and Anna and all the rest of the people of Israel.

He is God become man

Presenting a child in the Temple was a customary thing that was done by Jewish families in those days as part of a ritual that would allow for Mary, Jesus’ mother, to be able to worship God in the Temple after giving birth. Without this ritual Mary would have been seen as “unclean” and would have been shunned by society, for if people made contact with her they too would become unclean. Being unclean then would be the equivalent of not being able to go to church if you had an infectious disease or virus, and not only that but no one would want to go near you until you were better. This was a significant event for Mary that would allow her to essentially be a member of society again.

Reminder

The fact that Jesus’ revelation as the Messiah comes whilst he is just over a month old is a timely reminder for all of us that the significance of Jesus isn’t just found in the things he taught or the way he died for us or even the fact that he came back from the dead. All of these are significant, don’t get me wrong, but the fact that Jesus is revealed as the Messiah this early on in his life reminds us of the significance of his incarnation in the first place - of the importance of the fact that God became man. That God loves each and every one of us to the extent that he gave up all the power of God to become a frail human being. Isn’t that a God that is worthy of our attention, of our time, and of our praise?

What sort of person was Jesus going to be?

We have covered how the presentation of Christ reveals who Jesus is - he is the messiah, God become man, the one who is going to bring humanity back to God in complete perfection. Now we look at what that means: what sort of person was Jesus going to be?

Jesus was going to be a servant

Presenting a child in the Temple was a customary thing that was done by Jewish families in those days as part of a ritual that would allow for Mary, Jesus’ mother, to be able to worship God in the Temple after giving birth. Without this ritual Mary would have been seen as “unclean” and would have been shunned by society, for if people made contact with her they too would become unclean. Being unclean then would be the equivalent of not being able to go to church if you had an infectious disease or virus, and not only that but no one would want to go near you until you were better. This was a significant event for Mary that would allow her to essentially be a member of society again.

Jesus was going to be a servant

Service

Jesus was the firstborn child which meant that he was to be presented as an offering to God as an act of thankfulness for what God has given them, and an act of trusting in God continuing to provide for their family. This all comes from a couple of passages from the book of Exodus in the Old Testament: and which as part of God’s law say that the firstborn child shall be given to God. Jesus, even before his ministry officially started, was marked to be someone who would serve God.

Serve God and serve the people

But it meant more than that. The firstborn traditionally served God by serving the needs of the people who came to worship in the temple.

The larger purpose of the infancy narrative in Luke is to instil in the hearers of his gospel a prophetic certainty that this Jesus is the expected Messiah.

This, in and of itself is nothing special, it is what every firstborn child was expected to do in some capacity. But when you combine this serving expectation with the revelation we have just had about who Jesus is as the Messiah, these dynamics of serving God and serving the people take on a wholly different meaning.

Jesus was going to be a sacrifice

God ultimately wants to be with his creation, to be perfectly reunited with us all - that’s the underlying storyline we see across the whole Bible, from Genesis to Revelation. But, because of our sin, we cannot be with God as we are - we need something to sort this out. And this is where Jesus serving God as the Messiah is revealed to us.

You see, the other way to interpret the passages from Exodus is to see the firstborn being presented to the Temple as a sacrificial offering to God. That was one of the purposes of the Temple, to present offerings to God in the form of lambs or doves or other animals that would be used to act as gifts of thanks but also in some circumstances, to take the punishment the people deserved for putting their own needs at the heart of their motivations rather than what God was asking of them - in other words the animals took the punishment for sin.

And so, when we see Jesus being presented at the temple we are invited to look forward to Easter, to the crucifixion of Jesus, to his role as the perfect sacrifice for the sins of all creation for who else can out us right with God but God himself? Jesus came to serve God by being the sacrifice, by being the means, that would allow God to be reconciled to his creation.

Jesus was going to be the solution

Linked to this is how Jesus as the messiah was serving the people. Presenting a child in the Temple was a customary thing that was done by Jewish families in those days as part of a ritual that would allow for Mary, Jesus’ mother, to be able to worship God in the Temple after giving birth. Without this ritual Mary would have been seen as “unclean” and would have been shunned by society, for if people made contact with her they too would become unclean. Being unclean then would be the equivalent of not being able to go to church if you had an infectious disease or virus, and not only that but no one would want to go near you until you were better. This presentation at the Temple was a significant event for Mary that would allow her to essentially be a member of society again.

Jesus does the same for us. When we put our faith in Christ we become united to his body and the Holy Spirit dwells within us. We are no longer outsiders but are instead invited to become part of God’s family - as tells us we are adopted into God’s family.

Jesus, the messiah presented at the temple, serves both God and his people by being the sacrifice to unite God to his people and is therefore the solution to our separation from God.

Conclusion

Conclusion

I began today saying I would show how the presentation of Christ reveals two things: 1) who Jesus is and 2) what sort of person he would be. Jesus is the messiah, our saviour. He is a servant, shown in him being the sacrifice for our sins and the solution to our separation from God. Saviour, Servant, Sacrifice, and Solution.

One reason for having all of the candles at candlemas is to remind us that Christ is the light of the world. When Jesus says that he is the light of the world in he says “Whoever follows me shall not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” If we don’t know who Jesus is and what sort of person he is then we are stumbling around in the darkness, walking through this life stumbling from one big unanswerable question to another. But if you know Jesus, our saviour, servant, sacrifice, and solution then you have the light of life. That light of life is the light that will give you life. When we follow Christ we are led by our saviour to the promise of eternal life, of life with God. So I leave you today with a question - Do you know Jesus? Have you seen the light?