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The
Messiah Nobody Expected
(An
Overview of Jesus' Ministry)
Onto the stage of Jewish Messianic expectation stepped
a lowly carpenter named Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus was born in Bethlehem (Micah
5:2) of the virgin Mary in the year 4 B.C.1 His coming was heralded
by a prophet named John the Baptist. John, a son of the priest Zechariah,
claimed to be the "voice of one crying in the wilderness" who was to
"prepare the way of the LORD..." (Isa. 40:3; John 1:23). His message
was as straightforward and bold as his personality. "Repent, for the
kingdom of heaven is at hand!" (Matt. 3:2), was his cry to the crowds who
flocked to hear him preach. Of course, the Jews should have known that
repentance and the coming of the Messianic kingdom were inseparably linked. They
had lost their kingdom for lack of repentance, and Moses said it could be
regained by no other means (Deut. 28-30). This truth is also reflected in the
Talmud, "If Israel repented but one day, the Son of David would immediately
come."2 Yet the vast majority of the nation failed to see its
need for repentance. There were some, however, who confessed their sins and were
baptized by John. Before long, Jesus came to be baptized. As Jesus approached,
John laid the foundation of Jesus' ministry with the inspired proclamation,
"Behold the lamb of God which takes away the sin of the world" (John
1:29). Jesus was baptized, not for the remission of sins, for He had none (Isa.
53:7), but that He might be made "manifest to Israel" (John 1:31).
This was the starting point of his three-and-a-half year ministry.
The Messiah from Galilee
In fulfillment of Isaiah 9:1-2,
Jesus based His ministry in the province of Galilee (Matthew 4:13-14). Jesus'
twelve disciples were all Galileans. It was at Cana of Galilee that Jesus
performed His first miracle turning water into wine at a wedding feast (John 2).
Ironically, Galilee was also the home base of the Zealots who were part of the
Nationalist Party.3 The Zealots had, no doubt, eyed Him as a prime
candidate to lead the charge against the Romans. Perhaps the Zealots took Jesus'
choice of a home base as a signal of revolutionary intent. Maybe they thought
Jesus was making favorable, political overtures by choosing their own Simon the
Zealot (Luke 6:15) to be among His inner core of disciples. When Jesus started
proclaiming, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand" (Matt.
4:17), there was but one kingdom His declaration invoked in the Zealot's mind,
the one Daniel said was to wreak, with bloody severity, vengeance upon the pagan
world powers (Dan. 2:44; 7:19-28).
So it comes as no surprise that
it was in Galilee that the people tried to make Jesus King by force (John
6:14-15). This occurred right after He had performed numerous miracles. The real
shocker must have been when Jesus refused to be their leader. Their two
ideologies could not have been more diametrically opposed.
Jesus Made it Clear
It was not that Jesus had failed
to be up front with them; He plainly stated that He did not come to
establish a political kingdom. "Now when He was asked by the Pharisees when
the kingdom of God would come, He answered them and said, 'The kingdom of God
does not come with observation; nor will they say, 'See here!' or 'See
there!' For indeed, the kingdom of God is within you'" (Luke 17:20).
The spiritual kingdom Jesus
sought to establish was one which required non-resistance to violent aggressors
(Matt.5:38), praying for persecutors (Matt.5:44), and submission to world
government (Matt. 22:15-21, Rom. 13:1). Before the Jews could reign with Messiah
in the age to come, God's kingdom must first reign in their hearts. This was the
last thing Jesus' contemporaries wanted to hear. They were looking for a king
who would conquer, kill, and vindicate. All they could see as they looked toward
heaven in prayer was the parting of the clouds and the descent of the conquering
Messiah riding on a shining white horse with a rod of iron in one hand and a
passport for their exaltation in the other. Their presupposition caused them to
overlook the suffering Messiah who was to come lowly, riding on a donkey, and
bringing salvation4 (Zech. 9:9). Jesus' own disciples were also
infected with the Jewish nationalism of their day. They asked, "'Lord, do
you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them [the
Samaritans who had just rejected Jesus], just as Elijah did?' Jesus turned and
rebuked them and said, 'You do not know what manner of spirit you are of. For
the Son of Man did not come to destroy men's lives but to save them'" (Luke
9:54-55). Jesus could not have made Himself any clearer!
The Acceptable Year of the Lord
At the beginning of His second
year of ministry, Jesus returned to His hometown of Nazareth where He revealed
the full scope of His Messianic mission. As was His custom, He entered into the
synagogue and stood up to read. The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to
Him. He unrolled it and read from Isaiah 61:1-2:
The Spirit of the Lord is upon
Me, because He has anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent Me
to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of
sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed; to proclaim the
acceptable year of the LORD. Then He closed the book, and gave it back to the attendant and sat down.
And the eyes of all who were in the synagogue were fixed on Him. And He began to
say to them, "Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing...But I
tell you truly, many widows were in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the
heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a great famine
throughout all the land; but to none of them was Elijah sent except to Zarephath,
in the region of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow. And many lepers were in
Israel in the time of Elisha the prophet, and none of them was cleansed except
Naaman the Syrian." So all those in the synagogue, when they heard these
things, were filled with wrath, and rose up and thrust Him out of the city; and
they led Him to the brow of the hill on which their city was built, that they
might throw Him down over the cliff. Then passing through the midst of them, He
went His way (Luke 4:14-27).
In this address, Jesus affirmed
four key components of His Messianic ministry: preaching the gospel to the poor,
performing miracles, ushering in "the acceptable year of the Lord,"
and unbelieving Israel.
Preaching the Gospel to the Poor
According to Isaiah, the Messiah
was to preach glad tidings to the poor. A hallmark of Jesus' ministry was His
outreach to the poor. He commanded His disciples to make this a high priority
(Galatians 2:10). When Jesus at His second coming sits and rules from David's
throne, one of the first things He will do is judge people in respect to how
they treated the poor (Matthew 25:31-46).
Miracles Performed
Isaiah also said that the Messiah
was to "grant recovery of sight to the blind." This intimates the
Messiah would perform healing miracles. In fact, Jesus specifically appealed to
His healing miracles as confirmation of His Messiahship. When John the Baptist
was cast into prison, he fell into a time of doubt and sent a messenger to Jesus
saying, "'Are you the coming One or do we look for another?' Jesus answered
and said to them, 'Go and tell John the things which you hear and see: The blind
see and the lame walk; the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear; the dead are
raised up and the poor have the gospel preached to them. And blessed is he who
is not offended because of Me'" (Matt. 11:4-6).
Jesus gave sight to the blind
(Matt. 9:27, John 9:1); made the lame to walk again (Matt. 9:2; Mark 8:22);
healed the deaf and dumb (Matt. 9:32; Mark 7:31); and raised the dead (Matt.
9:24-25; John 11:43). No one could deny the fact that He was performing
miracles. Even the Pharisees, the religious leaders of the Jewish people and
archenemies of Jesus, acknowledged that Jesus performed miracles. But they
attributed these works to the power of Satan (Mark 3:22; Matt. 9:34; 7:24).
Judaism today also acknowledges this truth. Joseph Klausner, Jewish scholar
formerly of Hebrew University at Jerusalem, states:
Talmudic authorities do not deny
that Jesus worked signs and wonders, but they look upon them as acts of sorcery.
We find the same things in the gospels: "And the Scribes which came down
from Jerusalem said, He hath Beelzebub, and, by the prince of devils he casteth
out devils" (Mark iii. 22); and in Matthew (ix. 34; xii. 24) the Pharisees
speak in similar terminology.5
But whoever heard of someone
opening the eyes of a man born blind by the power of Satan? And only someone
operating under the power of God could raise someone from the dead. The gospels
cite four different occasions in which Jesus raised someone from the dead. We
know that Jesus did "many other miracles" besides the ones
specifically written in the New Testament (John 20:30). Jesus even raised
Himself from the dead. The power to create or restore life has never been in
Satan's hands. In the context of witnessing several of Jesus' miracles, many of
the people rightly concluded, "When Messiah comes, will He do more signs
than these which this man has done?" (John 7:31).
Acceptable Year of the Lord
When Jesus referenced Isaiah
61:1-2 in His synagogue address, He only quoted from the first part of verse 2,
"the acceptable year [dispensation] of the Lord." He stopped just short
of the latter part of verse 2, "And the day of vengeance of our God."
This was very significant. As previously mentioned, Jesus did not come to usher
in God's vengeance. He came not to "...destroy men's lives but to save
them." He was to be the sacrificial Lamb of God that was to take away the
sins of the world. This He went on to fulfill in a way they did not expect.
As prophesied, Jesus was betrayed
by Judas Iscariot into the hands of the rulers, chief priests, and teachers of
the law. He was illegally tried by the Jewish Sanhedrin and sentenced to death
for blasphemy for claiming to be the Son of God. He was handed over to Pilate,
who had Him brutally beaten, scourged, and then crucified. After His death, His
body was laid in a rich man's tomb. But the grave could not keep its hold on
Jesus. Since He was not an imposter, but truly the Son of God, He was raised
from the dead. During His forty-day post-resurrection ministry, He appeared to
over 500 of His disciples. After instructing them concerning the kingdom of God,
He commissioned them to preach the acceptable time of God's salvation.
"Behold now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation"
(2 Cor. 6:2).
Israel's Unbelief The Messiah
Everyone Rejected
After quoting Isaiah 61:1-2,
Jesus, in effect, rebuked the Nazarenes for their unbelief by comparing their
sinfulness to the days of their forefathers in Israel. Because Israel's apostasy
was so bad, God commissioned Elijah and Elisha to only heal two Gentiles: Naaman
the Syrian and the widow of Zarephath from the region of Sidon. This was
tantamount to saying that Israel was in rebellion to God. No wonder this
infuriated them to the point that they attempted to throw Jesus over a cliff.
>From the beginning to the end of His ministry, Jesus told Israel that they
needed to repent. They either had to accept Jesus' evaluation or reject it.
Sadly, they failed to see the day of God's visitation. It didn't matter to them
how many miracles Jesus performed. Since Jesus failed to perform the one miracle
they awaited, swift deliverance from Rome's tyrannical rule, they rejected Him.
The Big Question
It is a matter of indisputable
historical fact that Jesus claimed to be the Messiah and that He lived and died
in the first century. Yet for many these questions still remain: "Was He
the fulfillment of Messianic prophecy as He and His followers asserted? Or was
he a false prophet who tried to lead Israel astray? Is it true that twentieth
century Judaism has, like her first century counterpart, completely overlooked
the Scriptures that prophesied a suffering Messiah? In rejecting Jesus as the
Messiah, has Israel committed the greatest error in history? Or has she
faithfully clung to the faith?" The rest of this work is devoted to
substantiating the Christian claim that Jesus is the Messiah. The age-old
question the reader needs to answer in the process is, "What should I do
with Jesus of Nazareth?"