Jesus Interprets His Own Person 2 - Jesus Reveals Himself as Messiah

[Music] as we continue our study of who does Jesus himself tell us that he is what does he say about himself we can perhaps appropriately begin this segment of our study with the two great christological affirmations in the gospels that is the two times in which key figures in the gospels really make a very clear and uncompromising statement about the person of Jesus one of these is well known it's in the 8th chapter of Mark we also have the same kind of a statement in Matthew and in Luke only a little bit different but here

we have it in Mark starting in verse 27 and Jesus went on with his disciples to The Villages of cesaria Philippi and on the way he asked his disciples who do men say that I am and they told him John the Baptist and others say Elijah and others one of the prophets and he asked them but who do you say that I am Peter answered him you are the Christ and he charged them to tell no one about him if you look up the Christ of course means the Messiah in Greek it's the Christ in

Hebrew the Messiah so if you look this up in Luke you'll find it says you are the Christ of God if you look it up in in Matthew you will find it says you are the Christ the son of God now actually we now know that these are all the same in that we now know that the Jews before the time of Christ used the phrase Son of God to apply to the Messiah we've now found lots of documents they're called the pseudepigrapha writings of the Jews that were not included into either the Old Testament

nor by us into the New Testament and they have this phrase so these are different sort of different wordings of the same kind of a statement this is a statement by Peter and it's good and it's strong and it's important and we're all familiar with it but there's another one that we sometimes don't notice or at least it's its importance does not occur to us and that is in the 11th chapter of John starting in verse 25 Jesus is talking to Martha and he says Jesus said to her I am the resurrection and the life

he who who believes in me though he die yet shall he live and whoever lives and Believes In Me shall never die do you believe this she said to him yes Lord I believe that you are the Christ the son of God he who is coming into the world now actually this is a higher christological affirmation a higher statement about the nature of the person of Jesus even than the statement that Peter makes why because she says you are the Christ the son of God that's what we have in Peter's confession in Matthew he who

is coming into the world now notice she doesn't say he who has come into the world but is coming into the world thereby there is a certain mystery about the phrase but it is an affirmation that Jesus is in some sense in a continuous process of coming into the world this becomes very close to the kind of language that Paul uses about Jesus in Colossians the first chapter starting in verse 15 where he talks about Jesus is the one through whom all things have come about and the one through whom all things are sustained so

we have kind of an affirmation of the word of God which is the present power of God that is in a process of continually sustaining the world around us so Jesus is coming into your life into my life into history into the life of the community of the church and so forth I think we haven't paid much attention to Martha's affirmation and have made a big deal out of Peter's for a very simple reason and that is that Peter is a a man and Martha is a woman but actually the gospels give us these two

affirmations one from a man and one from a woman they are both in terms of their type they are ontological we find out who Jesus is by his titles but we are starting with Peter where Jesus says who do men say that I am Peter answers you are the Christ the son of God and we're asking a third question as though Peter then turned around and said very well Lord I have confessed who I think you are now will you tell us who you think you are this is the question we're asking not what do

people out there Think Jesus is not what do you the disciples say about me but what does Jesus himself say about himself and our key is looking to see how he starts with the tradition in the Old Testament reinterprets it and in the process makes an affirmation about himself now the place at which we're going to look at this in this study is in the great text in Isaiah 61 where Jesus is preaching his first sermon as we have it in the fourth chapter of Luke this text we have gone over very carefully in one

of our previous studies in a study of the mission of the church and also we looked at it very briefly in our study of The Parables but here we want to look at it from the point of view of Jesus taking the Old Testament and making a statement about himself now first of all let's take a look at the text itself and look at the way the text is put together Jesus reads from Isaiah as follows Isaiah and he's quoting from Isaiah 61 but the text we have recorded in in Luke 14 starting in verse

17 the spirit of the Lord is upon me for he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor he has sent me to Proclaim to the prisoners freedom and to the blind recovery of sight to send forth the oppressed in Freedom to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord now the text itself is edited that is there are four changes in the text the first thing that happened if you care to you could open the text of Isaiah 61 and you'll notice that when we get halfway through verse one there's a long phrase

to bind up the Brokenhearted and this has been lifted out and then the next thing you'll notice is that Jesus in the second statement about sending somebody out in Freedom he says to send forth the oppressed in Freedom this is borrowed from three chapters away from chapter 61 he goes back to Chapter 58 and then he jumps back to chapter 61 again and then the word to Proclaim is really not there in the Hebrew or in the Greek Old Testament it merely says to say or to call and then you'll notice that Jesus has clipped

a verse verse two in our Old Testament to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor and the rest of the verse says and the day of Vengeance of our God which he has very carefully left out now critical scholarship for a long time has said well you know this is a composite quote fair enough it is and uh probably the church after the resurrection is decided Well Jesus is the Messiah so here's a let's put together kind of a a little play as it were about his first sermon and so that this is put together

by the early church and not by Jesus of Nazareth not only does the text say that Jesus has done it but when we look at the text carefully we find out that the rules allowable to a reader from the prophets in a Jewish synagogue in the first century are followed what are these rules they're recorded in the mishna a collection of the sayings of the Jewish Scholars from 200 BC to 200 ad and then then they're repeated in the Babylonian talmud where the Jewish Scholars again are commenting on the phrases in the mishna that's what

the talmud is a commentary on the mishna and what do they say they say well if you're reading from the law of Moses that has special prominence in the Jewish Community you're supposed to read it just as it is but when you come to the prophets you can do a little bit of editing if you like if you find something you really don't want to read for any reason you can leave it out they actually put that rule in because well 18th 19th Chapter of Ezekiel has some very explicit sexual language and if you think

well you know we really don't need to read this stuff you can leave part of it out if you want to then they said you can bring in a verse from somewhere else and put it into the text if you want to as long as the verse isn't too far away what was the rule the reader is Reading in Hebrew people don't understand the Hebrew by this time they're all speaking Aramaic so there's a translator the translator as you read a verse at a time is translating it into Aramaic so that the people can understand

it so the rule was give the translator a couple of verses and if you can turn the scroll it wasn't a book it was a scroll to the new verse before the translator gets done translating it's okay you can't put down one scroll pick up another one you can't go from the end of a scroll to its beginning or from the beginning to the end no it's got to be fairly close so that you can catch that new text before your translator finishes the previous translations and we notice that Jesus is following these rules now

people ask me you know what was Jesus doing from the time he was 12 until he was 30 I've been asked that all over the world I have a very clear idea in the back of my mind what he was doing he was seated with the scholars in his community there was a word for them they called them theim the companions or the experts and these were the people many of them scribes and Pharisees who sat around in Village after Village in the Holy Land in the time of Jesus and they spent all of their

spare time after work and on Saturdays debating how we are to understand the law and the prophets and what it is we're supposed to do on the basis of that understanding the debates were very precise and they went on and on and on and Jesus is sitting there aart of this what's he doing he's hammering out very carefully in his own mind what he is going to say to the people when he starts his public Ministry why does he wait until he's 30 well probably partly to get a bit of age on himself because even

at the age 30 he's considered in that Society barely out of diapers but never mind he also wants and needs time to wrestle with how am I going to understand the tradition what am I going to say to these people when I get ready to proclaim the coming of the kingdom of God and myself at its Center so what do we have when he reads this not only does he read the text and as I say scientifically there is no reason to deny that Jesus is the compiler why because the rules of compilation are rules

that were allowable for a reader of the prophets and Jesus is reading from the prophets so we will proceed with the assumption that Jesus has for years very carefully put together what his first sermon is going to be all about and how he's going to read from the text and what bits and pieces he's going to leave out and what bits and pieces he's going to include in our study of the mission of the church we've gone through this text with care but here we want just to ask the question about what Jesus is saying

about himself what does he read the spirit of the Lord is upon on me for he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor and it goes on now you'll recall that in the end of the third chapter of Luke we have the story of the baptism of Jesus now here in the fourth chapter of Luke we have his first public sermon to the community and the two are related because in his baptism we are told that the Spirit came and rested on him and here we are told the spirit of the Lord

is upon me so Jesus is is the one who is claiming that the spirit of the Lord is uniquely on him because in the Old Testament the spirit of the Lord came and went on the prophets and so the prophet would the spirit would come upon the prophet and he would prophesy and in one case Elijah is called upon to prophesy by the king and he says you know I'm not in the mood please get the musicians to play so that I can get in the prophetic mood that the spirit might be given to me

and I might be able to prophesy no the spirit comes and dwells on Jesus in a unique fashion and the voice from Heaven if you will recall says this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased and the phrase in whom I am well pleased is a quotation from a part of the first verse of Isaiah 6 42:1 which says behold my servant whom I uphold my chosen in whom my soul Delights in English the words come out not quite the same but in Hebrew and in Greek they are the same this is

a quotation the voice from Heaven at the baptism of Jesus quotes from Isaiah 621 what difference does this make that verse is a part of one of the great suffering servant songs and that verse also says I have put my spirit upon him so the baptism of Jesus quotes from a suffering Servant Song in Isaiah Jesus picks up Isaiah 61 and reaffirms this where he say says the spirit of the Lord is upon me second phrase for he has anointed me the word anoint for us uh doesn't come out as a noun and a verb

but in Hebrew you could make and in Greek you could make it into a noun or into a verb so the word messiah in Hebrew means the anointed one or the word Christ in Greek means christas means the anointed one so here we have the same language as a verb he has we would have to say Messiah me he has made out of me the Messiah to preach good news to the poor now when Jesus gets done reading from the text he says today this scripture has been fulfilled in your ears now thereby in a

clear and unmistakable fashion Jesus is claiming that he is the suffering servant of God because this language is reinforced by that great Servant Song in Isaiah 42 he is claiming to be the one on whom the spirit uniquely dwells and he is claiming to be the Messiah now the people are quite ready to have anyone who wants to say that they are the Messiah as long as the Messiah does what the people expect now what did they understand that the Messiah was supposed to do well they had a pretty clear idea and that was first

of all he's going to become a political figure and drive the Romans out and reestablish the kingdom of David second thing he's going to do is he is going to cause a tremendous economic surge everybody's going to have bread enough and to spare and the third thing he's going to do is to demonstrate who he is by some great public Miracle we don't want any confusion let's be quite clear as to what this is all about and so with this great public Miracle he hangs a big sign on himself and says I'm the Messiah and

I have proven it now think for a moment friends about the Temptations of Jesus what does the Devil tempt him to do and that happens right before we come to this text why don't you take over the kingdoms of this world looking out from a high mountain of course they're looking over the holy land and why don't you take this bre these stones and turn it into bread and why don't you throw yourself down from the Pinnacle of the temple please notice that all three of these are Temptations to do the things which the people

expect of the Messiah kick all of these Gentile Greeks out take over the kingdom as a pure Jewish Kingdom and be our political ruler even as David was and see toward that we live in the economic golden age and demonstrate Who You Are by becoming by by uh some great miracle that everybody sees with the sign on you which says Messiah authenticated a few signatures how about the high priest if you throw yourself down from the Pinnacle of the temple in the temple area and the high priest and the Sanhedrin are watching they will have

to sign an identity card which says Messiah then there'll be no confusion if you do this Jesus the entire nation is going to be eating out of of your hand overnight but if you claim to be Messiah and you don't do these things they'll kill you now what happens in this text in this particular text Jesus comes to the part where Isaiah talks about as we have it here in Isaiah 61 the day of Vengeance of our God God and the people in his audience thought aha the Messiah yes they had no problem saying that

the Messiah the anointed one of course that means the Messiah and is set Liberty to the captives and proclaimed the year of the Lord's favor and the Vengeance of our God that's the great battle in which we beat up all of these non-jews and then uh uh that that we may be called Oaks of righteousness and then it says alien shall stand and feed your flocks foreigners shall be your plowmen and Vine dressers you shall eat the wealth of the Nations and in their riches you shall Glory if Jesus had kept reading he would have

fulfilled their expectation or at least announced their expectations of the Messiah and what did they do when he stopped reading they were a bit nervous about what he'd read and Jesus says I know what's going through your mind you know that I did some Miracles down in capernium and why don't I do some Miracles up here you want to know where are the immediate physical benefits of the kingdom of God the acceptable year of the Lord which is to come with the Messiah you want to know why I stopped reading and didn't say the day

of Vengeance of our God that would take care of the political expectations and you want to know what why I didn't read this bit about aliens shall be your plowmen and Vine dressers and you shall eat the wealth of the Nations that would have taken care of the expectations of the economic uplift and you want to know why don't I do a few Miracles you know to prove who I am and that would take care of the big sign but in The Temptations Jesus had already decided he wasn't going to go this route he was

going to go the route of the suffering servant to redeem not Israel but the whole world he was going to deliver them not from their political enemies but from their sins and so what happens after the Temptations Jesus reads from Isaiah in the synagogue he claims to be the Messiah and he claims to be the suffering servant and he claims to to be the one on whom the spirit uniquely dwells and then he goes on for that audience specifically to knock down the three specific things that he was tempted about in the wilderness the audience

catches it no great political Kingdom no tremendous economic uplift we're not going to get rich over this no public demonstration of miracle for the purpose of establishing your identity and now folks I'm I'm not amazed that Jesus ended up on a cross I am amazed that he managed to keep talking this way for 3 years please notice our Central Quest Jesus has taken Isaiah he has edited it he's edited edited it according to the rules allowable to a reader of the prophets in a first century synagogue so they can't complain about that but in the

process of editing and in the process of his commentary the dialogue that takes place between him and the audience on the basis of the text if you please his sermon preaching on the text that he has read he has made a loud clear clear bold unmistakable statement about who he is not only did he ask the disciples who do men say that I am and who do you say that I am from his very first sermon he has given a loud clear indication as to who he understands himself to be for he tells them today

this scripture has been fulfilled in your ears he is the one who is the Messiah but the messiahship is not going to be the kind of a messiah which the people expect he is going to set his own standards as to who that Messiah really is part of it is from the prophets but he is the unique Prophet on whom the spirit of God dwells he is the expected Messiah and he will fulfill the expect expectations which his father has placed on him and not the expectations which the crowd has he made this Crystal Clear

in The Temptations in the wilderness he makes it now crystal clear for this audience of nationalists and enthusiasts for the Messiah but not for the kind that he wants because he brings himself to them as the Messiah who is the suffering servant of God amen