Who Was Jesus?Sample

We live in a world that is overflowing with problems. It’s easy to drown in despair when we dwell on the magnitude of unfairness and pain. We need hope to keep us afloat. Some of us put our hope in human ingenuity, but if we have anything to learn from the twentieth century, it’s that human power is a double-edged sword.

Over two and a half millennia ago, a mountain kingdom on the River Jordan faced conquest and extermination from the sprawling Assyrian Empire. The prophet Isaiah warned his fellow Israelite countrymen not to put their hope in the deals they might be able to make with Egypt but to put their hope in God.

Isaiah spoke of an ‘anointed’ person who would right the wrongs of the world. One day a Messiah/Christ (these are Hebrew/Greek words meaning ‘anointed one’) would come with good news for the poor. He would come to set prisoners free, bring sight to the blind, and announce ‘the year of the Lord’s favour’.

Centuries later, Jesus began His ministry by reading from the scroll of Isaiah’s prophecy and claiming to be the fulfilment of it. Jesus came to do something about the problems we’re drowning in: to replace imperial oppression with a king who washes feet, to put to death the destructive patterns of behaviour we can’t shake off, and to help us see our need for him.

A prophecy in Daniel 7 looks forwards to a day when the evil empires that oppress the world are brought to an end. A figure ‘like a son of man’ comes riding on the clouds to receive an everlasting kingdom from God. This is the picture Jesus most often uses to describe His Messiahship. He comes from heaven as the one anointed to rule the world, replacing the evil powers that oppress it.

Jesus comes to us as Messiah because we’re people who need rescuing. We need rescuing from the forces of evil that oppress the world, from the problems we’re drowning in. But we also need rescuing from ourselves. Each of us has made a contribution to the suffering in the world. Each of us is the ruler of our own little kingdom. Will we let the Messiah be the Master of our soul, or will we struggle against Him?