Advent 2020 - 1 – The Messiah is Coming

20-11-15 Pre-Advent – The Messiah is Coming

HBI: Through the darkness we may face we have the hope of salvation that was promised to us by God. 

Intro

Christmas is coming upon us soon so I thought we would get into a new sermon series on the Christmas message. 

I was wondering what to investigate this year and I realized that there are people who do not realize that there was a messiah. There are people who know there was a messiah but do not realize that His coming was foretold long before He was born. 

God always keeps His promises and there are many promises made in the Old Testament that we see fulfilled already in the person of Jesus. How should fulfilled promises affect our life. 

Mathematically speaking, the odds of anyone fulfilling this amount of prophecy are staggering. Mathematicians put it this way: 1 person fulfilling 8 prophecies: 1 in 100,000,000,000,000,000 (one hundred quadrillion)1 person fulfilling 48 prophecies: 1 chance in 10 to the 157th power 1 person fulfilling 300+ prophecies: Only Jesus!1

There are churches today that do not teach that the Old Testament is important for today. There are many Christians that wonder why we must read the Old Testament to begin with. 

Did you know that the Old Testament announces the good news of the coming Messiah? That the Old Testament makes up about ¾ of the bible? 

There are many promises in the Old Testament and we can still learn to apply to our lives today. As I was figuring out what to preach for Advent this season, I was looking at all the prophecy in the New Testament and where it was talked about in the Old Testament. I believe it adds meaning as we read through the bible. 

So this Christmas season I want us to look through the gospels and see how they were mentioned so long before Jesus was born. What this should do is leave no other doubt in anyone’s mind that Jesus was the promised Messiah. 

Main Theme of series: God promised a messiah many years ago who was who he said he was. We will learn this without any doubt. He then died for our sin and will come back again which should leave us with only one choice, to follow Him with our whole lives.

The Promise – 

We start out in the book of Isaiah. One of the major themes of the prophets is the coming messiah and the promise that god would save a remnant of the people that would tell people of God and the messiah. 

The time we go into is around 700 BC. The kingdom of Israel is no longer untied but divided because of the sin of the people and their kings against God. 

Isaiah was called by God to warn the people of their judgement because of their sin. Assyria was going to come and attack them and carry off their stuff and their people. 

Assyria was rising up against the southern Kingdom of Israel and they were trying to pressure Judah into an alliance to rise up against the Assyrians. 

The King in the North was Ahaz and He was an evil king who trusted in people instead of trusting in God. 2 Kings tells us that Ahaz even burned His son on an altar to a Pagan Idol and did many other evil things. 

Ahaz had already made an alliance with, Assyria But God told Isaiah to go to Ahaz with his son Shear Jashub. An interesting side not about the children of the prophets is that their names where part of prophecy as well. 

Isaiah was told to name His son Shear Jashub which means a remnant shall return. A message of hope. Isaiah was told to go to Ahaz and tell him to smarten up and trust in God or things would get much worse for them then they already where. 

Isaiah 7:9 9 the chief city of Ephraim is Samaria, and the chief of Samaria is the son of Remaliah. If you do not stand firm in your faith, then you will not stand at all.

It is starting to sound bad, they where going to be sacked if they did not turn to God and the pressure was on as Assyria was coming nearer but still there was still hope. There is always hope if we know where to look. 

Faith in the promises of God is the only way to have hope in the midst of any situation. Peace is only available in the amazing promises of God. 

Turn to God or face judgement they where told. We are told the same thing but for us Judgement will not come till Jesus comes back or we go to see Him, we are given a chance as well to turn to the Lord. 

God would not leave them without Hope, without a way to turn to Him and change their ways. So that is where the prophecy today we are going to look at comes in. 

Isaiah 9:6-7 6  For a child will be born for us, a son will be given to us, and the government will be on His shoulders. He will be named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace. 7 The dominion will be vast, and its prosperity will never end. He will reign on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish and sustain it with justice and righteousness from now on and forever. The zeal of the LORD of Hosts will accomplish this.

The messiah was promised to come and save the people. This is just one of many promises of His coming. 

What we have here is the hope of Salvation. In the midst of the darkness that we may face we need to remember that what was promised many years ago came and will come again. Hope of the salvation from sin. 

The Fulfillment –

The main idea we are looking at through this series is God’s promise fulfilled. The promise of Hope and salvation that we are reminded at Christmas. 

But we must be prepared. We are given the same warning as the Israelites where given, That if we do not stand firm in our faith we will not stand at all. 

The message of hope we have come even in the midst of despair. Jesus was already born and died and rose again, but the promise is still to be fulfilled of His coming again some day.

So we must be prepared and there must be an urgency in the message to tell other people of the hope they can have in the second coming of the messiah. 

You see at the time this was going on there would seem to be little hope as well. Both times the prophecy was mentioned hope seemed to be scarce. 

The book of Malachi, the last book in the bible was written somewhere around 420BC. So if you do the math there was about 400 years of silence from God. 

Amos 8:11  Look, the days are coming— this is the declaration of the Lord God— when I will send a famine through the land: not a famine of bread or a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord. 

There were no prophets, no messages from God. Only the words they already had. This would have been hard to get used to. 

So, from the time of the prophecy of the messiah that we read in Isaiah till the prophecy was told to Joseph and Mary was about 700 years. I wonder how many people lost hope that the messiah would come.

Enter Mary and Joseph. Most people know their story. Mary a young lady, we do not know for sure the age of, but we do know they usually got betrothed at a young age. 

For almost 800 years they where waiting for some sign of the messiah and for 400 years God had stopped talking to them directly. 

The prophecy was suddenly going to be fulfilled in the life of a carpenter and his wife in a very humble way. For so long they had been without hope, or so it seemed. 

All they had was the promise that was given by God that there was going to be a messiah that would come and save them from their sin. 

That is when we get to the fulfillment in Matthew 1:20-23 20 But after he had considered these things, an angel of the Lord suddenly appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, don’t be afraid to take Mary as your wife, because what has been conceived in her is by the Holy Spirit. 21 She will give birth to a son, and you are to name Him Jesus, because He will save His people from their sins.” 22 Now all this took place to fulfill what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet: 23 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.” 

The Application

Names at the time meant something, kids where named certain things for various reasons but the names had meanings which where important. The Names that are given to us of God reveal to us aspects of His character. 

Jesus means saviour. And even from conception was said that He was going to save the people from their sins. 

His name will be called Immanuel which literally means God is with us. This was no ordinary child but God in the flesh. 

The prophecy of the messiah was happening, hope after a long period of darkness. The messiah would have Godly wisdom as compared to the failure of human wisdom that was shown until then. 

He will rule with Peace, His reign will be an eternal reign He will establish justice and righteousness in His rule. 

The prophecy doesn’t just look to the first coming of Christ but also to His second coming. Some people missed the first coming because they thought the messiah was going to come as a conquering king. 

This si what we are going to look into as we head into Christmas. This message of hope that we have been given in the promise of God that was fulfilled in Jesus. 

His name is wonderful, His reign will be magnificent. His name will be counsellor, He is God and will have the wisdom to rule justly. 

And as mighty God He has the power to execute his plans. It is going to happen whether we like it or not. He is the Father of eternity, or eternal father. 

This was the promise given to the Israelites as they where being sent into captivity for their sin. Turn to God they where told. But they did not. 

The same promise is for us as well, the same promise of Hope. We can trust that what was written by God is true. 

In the midst of the temptation of sin, in the midst of darkness and despair, in the midst of whatever we are going through there is hope. 

There is hope in the freedom from sin and the promise of an eternal reign some day with Jesus. So what must we do? We need to accept this message and prepare for when Jesus comes or we go to see Him again.