who is Jesus at the very core of calling yourself a Christian means that you have decided to follow Jesus of Nazareth as if he is the Son of God and that he is the way and the truth to actually following God Faithfully Jesus Is God inside human flesh Jesus is Lord and King and ruler of this world in real time as we're recording this episode it's right before Christmas in 2024 as I rode through my neighborhood this morning yards were filled with every ornament and decoration that you could possibly imagine every decoration that is besides
anything that points to or brings glory to our Lord I actually have a Jewish friend in the neighborhood who decorates and celebrates for Christmas he says he can do this because the holiday has been so disassociated from the actual celebration of Jesus's birth this is a tra aesty in this video we're going to attempt to correct that imbalance and put our focus on the one true king Jesus himself as we explore together who Jesus is and what the Bible actually has to say we are going to find a call into action this series will be
broken up into four separate videos and important themes for understanding who is Jesus we will explore in this video today the important theme of understanding Jesus as Messiah we will see Jesus as the Christ and to know that term in its ancient Hebrew Roots this is going to be an eye openening Series where incredible Scholars like n t Wright Tim Macky of the Bible project and Dr Michael Heiser are going to help us see our savior more clearly so that we can serve him more Faithfully when you encounter the real Jesus you will most assuredly
encounter a call to action stay tuned Jesus is near welcome to another episode of ring them Bells the focus of this Channel and the Bible is Jesus now some call Jesus Jesus Christ what does Christ mean is it a title for Jesus is it Jesus's last name the meaning behind the word Christ gives us the backdrop for the entire biblical narrative as we begin to understand this word Christ will see that it's directly associated with the Jewish word Messiah and this word Messiah contained with inside the Hebrew scriptures traces back all the way to the
Garden of Eden where we find the first promise of the snake Crusher this two-part series will not only help you understand the word Messiah but also the meaning of the entire Bible and your purpose inside all of this the Bible project has taught us that the Bible is a unified story that leads to Jesus one of the ways that the Bible is Unified is understand understanding the Bible through this promise of the snake Crusher and the ultimate promise of the Messiah I want to take a quick second to ask you to subscribe this Channel's growing
rapidly and the reach and scope that God's giving this channel is blowing my mind but every subscription every like every share helps us get the good news out about what Jesus has done for this world so let's get straight to it what we are going to meditate on is moments in the biblical story where someone gets oil poured on their head or when an object gets oil poured on top of it I mean it's an ancient Christian thing okay it's mentioned even in the apostolic writings yeah and so it's a practice that has spread into
all branches of the Christian tradition Orthodox Catholic in the Christian tradition has roots and stories and poems that we're going to look at in the Hebrew Bible but in the New Testament actually I think if you follow through this will be the last time that the actual practice is mentioned it's in the letter of James here check this out James 5 verse 14 is anyone among you sick he should call for the Elders of the church they should pray over him anointing him that means smearing or wiping him with oil in the name of the
Lord and the prayer offered in trust was will restore the one who is sick if you go from here in James and start going backwards M you'll find that all the trails lead you back to a particular word for anoint or smear with oil it's the Greek word Creo which when you talk about a person who has been poured or smeared with oil the title of that figure is christas which is the name Christ excuse me the title Christ and that is a Jewish Greek way of describing an ancient Israelite practice of pouring oil on
certain people and places and the Hebrew word for that is mashak and what you call someone who's had oil smeared or poured over them is mashiach from which we get the word Messiah okay to say yeah yeah so to say this back yeah there's a word in Greek well let's start with Hebrew oh okay I was going backwards yeah you're going backwards okay let's go backwards yeah so James would have been using the word anoint Creo he actually uses a synonym of it Alo but it means the same it means to put a thick dense
oil liquid on someone okay so to put oil on someone there's a word in Greek uh there's actually a couple words there's a couple words in Greek one is Creo yeah and then if you are someone who has had this done to you you're a Christos yeah Christos and that's where we get the word Christ so they called Jesus Jesus the Christ is say Jesus the one who's been Anointed with oil correct Jesus the anointed one Jesus the anointed one and anointed one I don't have a lot of categories for but when you say Messiah
that's another very familiar term yeah and you're saying that in Hebrew the same idea has the Hebrew word Messiah which we get the word Messiah yep so to be the anointed one in Hebrews to be the Messiah to be the anointed one in Greek is to be the Cristos either way it's the same idea same idea different vocabulary different vocabulary yeah the one anointed mhm yep and to be anointed or to be the anointed one means I'm someone who had oil poured on me specifically my head right but I'm imagining for a very specific purpose
yeah oh yeah it's fully you wouldn't be like loaded with tons of symbolism yeah there's a ritual in the Bible involving fragrant plants and and spices that make a rich oil to pour on special objects or people this is called anointing oil and its meaning is rooted in the story of the Garden of Eden where God provided water for the dry land and formed the human filling him with his spirit this is the first anointing the oil is a liquid symbol it's the Water of Life and God's spirit combined together used to Mark a person
or a place as a bridge between Heaven and Earth so one way to start this conversation is just to start with the unique and odd practice once you step back and think of it of pouring oil on someone's head as something that's like cosmically full of meaning you know like okay but what's that for another way to get at this is to notice that the name of Jesus the name that he's typically known or called by actually has this word anointed one built into it MH and it's a title not a name well exactly exactly
so Jesus Christ so what's interesting about the phrase Jesus Christ is the way that it sounds in English is as the way that an English or western culture we structure personal names mhm which is your given name yeah and then your family name and usually we don't include the middle name MH I call you John Collins yeah and you call me Tim Mackey actually I call you John right if I'm talking to someone else about you I'll clarify John Collins so what's interesting is that I think in run-of-the-mill American culture and because this name has
become a cuss word or cuss phrase that it's widely assumed that Christ is just like Jesus's last name like his family name right Born to Joseph Christ Mary CH Mary Christ Joseph Mary Christ had a son Jesus Christ and I think most people after they follow Jesus a while figure out that that's not the case I don't know when that became particularly clear to me but it was connected with me coming to understand the fact that Christ was not a name that it's a title so that's just that's the main point of this whole last
10 minutes conversation Christ is not a name it's a title and it's a title connected to an ancient practice yes of pouring oil on someone yep for a very specific meaning you got it so what's interesting is here we'll just sample the way the the phrase gets used in the New Testament so let's just turn to the gospel of Mark chapter 1 reads the beginning of the good news about Jesus Christ the son of God so it's the Greek words Yus it's Jesus's name in Greek and Christos Jesus Messiah so what's interesting is in the
New Testament predominantly when the phrase Jesus Christ is used the wordthe is not put in front of Christ Jesus the Christ right it happens occasionally but because of the lack of the word the it's very easy to feel like they're using it as a family name but you get other instances like later on in Mark where Jesus asks his disciples like who do people say that I am and they say ah you're some say John the Baptist or Elijah and Jesus says but who do you all say that I am and Peter answers you are
the Christ and there in English reflecting the fact that they're in Greek the word the is in front of it so it's very clearly a title so essentially I think what we need to do in our minds is Supply that word the' mentally MH every time you see the word m because it always retained its Nuance of meaning as a title not a family name yeah so here's an interesting example in John chapter 1 Jesus is cruising around Galilee and he's starting to recruit his crew his little discipleship crew and when he gets to Andrew
he goes goes and finds his brother Simon and says we have found the Messiah and then John interrupts the story and he whispers in your ear the narrator speaks in your ear and says translated into Greek it means Christos so what's the word he uses first yeah so when you quote Simon's speech he spells the Hebrew word mashiach with Greek letters oh so he transliterates he transliterates mashiah into Greek letters Messias and then John Whispers In Your Ear says yeah and that translated into Greek means Christos so the biblical authors have not forgotten that this
is a title right and I guess that's maybe that's not that big of a deal to make the point but mentally for me I just started saying Jesus Messiah to because English it just sounds like a last name just the way it works Christ does yeah but Messiah doesn't Messiah doesn't right so I've gotten into the habit of just when I see the phrase Jesus Christ or Jus Christos just say Jus Messias or Jesus Messiah which just begs the question of well so what does that mean and it reminds you of what it means yeah
what does that mean to be the Messiah that's that's what does it mean so first we're going to explore its meaning in multiple steps of the conversation but maybe let's get at it this way let's do a quick survey of who or what gets oil poured on them or it in the storyline of the Bible and it's actually a fairly limited number of people and places and just working through that list itself can I think get us closer during his Wilderness Exile Jacob had a dream he sees a Stairway leading up to heaven when he
wakes he anoints the stone on which he slept and called the place House of God a place where Heaven and Earth are one the Israelites built the Tabernacle in the wilderness when it was completed they anointed the tent with oil marking it as a place where God's Heavenly presence has come down to earth Genesis 28:10 and Yakov sorry my translation I try and spell the names the way they're pronounced in Hebrew so Yakov Jacob went out from Bea and he went to Khan and he encountered the place the place and he stayed the night there
because the sun had gone down and so he took some stones of the place and he set his head rest and he laid down in that place it's very clearly like something about the place something about this place yeah well so there you go so uh the fact that it's a stone for the head rest is also of symbolic importance for the because the Stone's about to get anointed you yeah you'll see you'll see all right so now he's sleeping his you know his State of Consciousness is made more vulnerable to perceiving other dimensions of
reality and so he has a dream and behold there was a ramp set on the land H sometimes translated ladder or stairway most accurately a ramp or stairway but a stair stair ramp now its head was in the skies the head of this ramp on the land was up in the skies now that's not the first time you've heard about something with its head up in the skies before you're talking about Genesis 11 the Tower of Babel Tower of Babel babyon yeah they built the structure and its head was in the skies they built a
city with a tower to make a name for themselves with its head in the skies yeah yeah this is exact same phrase okay yeah so what the people of Babylon were striving to build which was a gateway to heaven the gateway to heaven and in fact the word Babel or Babylon in the Semitic language inadian means the Gate of the Gods oh yeah you that Bob Means gate of the Gods oh wow in a Cadian yeah which is a cousin language it's a Semitic language cousin Semitic language to yeah ancient Hebrew so just tuck that
thought away e instead of L yeah that's right it's for God yep Bob Bob ill the Gate of the Gods so what Jacob sees is a ramp going up into the skies set on the land but its head is up in the skies and look messengers of Elohim God were going up and going down upon it there's traffic between Heaven and Earth on this ramp and look Yahweh was standing on it and then Yahweh has this long speech where he says to Jacob repeating the promises that he made to Abraham and then to Isaac his
father saying the land that you were lying on I will give it to you and to your descendants and your descendants will be like the dust of the land you're going to break out to the West the East the north the South and in you all the families of the ground are going to find blessing and also in your seed okay that's classic promise to Abraham okay I am going to go with you I'll keep you wherever you go I'll return you back to this ground I will not abandon you until I've done what I've
spoken to you bring you back to this spot bring you back to this ground this ground yeah like the me the spot the the let kill you oh no no no Jacob's fleeing and he's about to leave his homeand the land of his family okay he's still technically in it mhm yep he's on the border he's on the border I see y okay he's running North away from his brother so Jacob woke up from his sleep and he said surely Yahweh is in this this place and I had no clue this place I didn't know
it this place and Jacob was afraid and he said how terrifying is this place this is none other than the house of Elohim this is the Gate of the Skies he found the secret Temple yes or it found him it found him yeah so the phrase House of Elohim is bit Elohim he's going to call the name of this place bateel or bethl bethl L is short for Elohim so House of God so he gets up in the morning and he took that stone that he used for headrest and he set it upright now as
a pillar and he poured olive oil on its head and he called its name bethl House of L and formerly the name of the place in the beginning was almond tree uh or lse and then he makes a vow saying if God will protect me then I'm come back here and this stone that I have placed as a pillar it will become the house of Elohim and I will give to God a tenth of anything he gives to me that's the story h lse a city yeah apparently he's in proximity to a a city called
lse a walled enclosure called lse which means almond Tre so everything in the stories about the place yeah the place it's a place he doesn't recognize what its true significance is and it's only when he falls asleep that he's open to see what's there and what he sees is it's a portal Between Heaven and Earth and so his response is to pour oil to anoint it with oil so surely this story is actually foundational for helping us understand the meaning of the symbol this ritual practice yeah what we could deduce is that to pour oil
on an object that's marking a place as to say this place is a bridge between Heaven and Earth there's a connection here between Heaven and Earth and to anoint it is to signify that place's connection to the Divine MH um now the place is in in some way mediating I mean there's a stairway so like Angelic beings God himself there's access so in some sense the place is a mediator of the Divine yeah and and specifically he took a stone MH from the place he used it as his head rest M then he has a
dream about a ramp being set on the land with its head up in the skies so his head is now on the ground yeah oh and he's dreaming of a ramp right there yeah on that rock so so if pouring oil on a place marks it as a portal mhm with its feet on the ground M or in this case his head on the ground but its head yeah up in the sky that becomes this really powerful narrative image of what is a mashiach what is a person who is Anointed they must in some way
play a similar role to this stone or this ramp that they are a person set aside in ritual spaces to be portals Between Heaven and Earth and we go back you know think about the king mediates God's Heavenly rule here on Earth that's how humans are presented in page one of Genesis as images of God so Gods rules in the heaven above and he installs Earthly rulers on the land below now we're not told well in the next conversation we'll go to the Garden of Eden story because I do think there's an anointing there that
if you have eyes to see it it it's all over just the word is not used in the Garden of Eden story but humans are portrayed as the archetypal anointed ones uh as the Earthly representatives of God's Heavenly Rule and Priests are presented in the same way in the Sacred Space and then prophets are a portal for the word of God to come to Earth we need your help ring them Bells is a nonprofit organization where every dollar donated goes right back into the mission of spreading the good news and helping those in need the
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God's wisdom they LED with violence leading to ruin and Exile their failure created hope for the ultimate anointed one so let's start with priests since they come first okay so in when Moses is up on Mount Si in the midst of the lightning storm seeing the Heavenly Temple and getting the blueprints for the Tabernacle there's a whole two whole chapters about the humans and the dress that they're going to have who are going to work in and around this sacred Tabernacle when it's finally built on the land down below and by humans you mean the
priests the priests exactly right the people who are going to work in Tabernacle and how they're supposed to dress that's part of the the vision that Moses is getting on siai you got it yep so Exodus chapter 29 is all about the special clothes the shiny glimmering brilliant colorful clothes that Aaron's going to wear it's Moses's brother and he gets a special like garment this golden chest piece with all these jewels and shoulder pieces and tassels and robes and then chapter 29 verse 6 you will set a turban on his head and put a holy
crown on the turban and you shall shall take the oil of anointing and you shall pour it out on his head o and anoint him notice the pouring and the anointing are separate steps so you pour and then as you pour there's like a smearing or a oh uh you're waving your hand at me yeah I am I'm if I poured oil from my vantage point yeah I'm pouring oil on you and then I'm and then you're rubbing it in yeah I'm rubbing I'm kind of wiping it on your forehead okay yeah that's the idea
and then you shall bring his sons and their robes and do the same to them so this is the first uh figure in the Bible who gets called that and then when the ritual actually happens is in Leviticus chapter 8 when Moses does all of this oh interestingly he sprinkles the oil on seven times and anoints the altar we'll talk about that in a minute and then he puts some of that oil on Aaron's head so he's the first one and after that point he's called the miach Aon is an anointed one he's called by
two titles the priest or the high priest HOH the great priest or the anointed one okay so that's the priest okay so what's read about this story is that it shows us the meaning of this practice that it marks a person or a place as a portal Between Heaven and Earth and with the Kings the priests and the prophets you get this image of a portal of God's rule for the king a portal of God's presence through the priest a portal for God's word and purpose through the prophet all those heavenly realities are brought to
Earth so to speak through this one who's marked by the oil in the same way that this place and this rock becomes a portal Between Heaven and Earth and that's what this whole story is about with Jacob so that raises all these other questions about like what is what does that mean to be a portal Between Heaven and Earth yeah like what's what does that really mean and so somehow the oil becomes itself this symbol of the liquid life liquid life of God that touches down here on Earth so this is what we'll explore in
the next steps of the conversation but just to let the cat out of the bag notice how oil and prayer are connected in that passage in James that we looked at and so what is prayer prayer is asking for the release of God's Heavenly purpose and power and life here on Earth in specific people and moments and so it's as if the oil and the prayer for healing or the God's power for healing are linked symbols of each other oh yeah dude cuz remember what Jesus's followers eventually come to be called in the book of
Acts they're called nazarin First in Jerusalem and followers of the way MH but once the followers of Jesus spread out and make the city of Antioch their home base this is in the book of Acts they start being called christianos anointed ones plural so how is it that this practice of marking just one out of thousands comes to be democratized right to refer to everybody in a whole group of people like what's going on with that one anointed not merely with oil but with water and spirit not merely a bridge to heaven but Heaven itself
come to Earth this is Jesus Christ more than a name Christ is a title it means anointed one the new human the ultimate Priest The Cosmic King God's Heavenly Life coming into our world in a new way a surprising way and after Jesus rose from the dead he spread his anointing out into the world through his followers Christians from the word Christ anointed ones who follow the anointed one people marked by God's spirit so that more and more of Earth can be filled with the life of Heaven the one thing though that I hope you
take away is structurally the way scripture presents this to us in in in the instance of three rebellions and more importantly how Jesus and what he does on the cross is specifically aimed at curing and reversing ing all three these are not things that you more or less have to you know make up these correlations the correlations are there they are in the text the language in the New Testament connects to the language of the Old Testament this is intentional it's strategic it's intelligent okay and so if you have one takeaway it's to think about
what Jesus did in response to not only the problem of our you know mortality eternal life but just how wonderfully and how sort of in an all-encompassing way what Jesus does in the New Testament and how it's talked about covers the gamut of all of these forces of Supernatural darkness and what they're about [Music] I [Music]
