The Word for today:
Psalm 72
mark this: Psalm 72:12-15
I teach year-long Bible classes. People kid me because I always name my classes. But I think long and carefully about the name for each new class. Each year the content varies, but the syllabus--see Luke 24:27-- is always the same: that the entire purpose of scripture's every word is the progressive revelation of Jesus Christ (Rev. 1:1).
Perhaps the most dramatic moment of the process occurs when Christ, in the flesh, is at long last revealed; when the towering prophet, John the Baptist, points to Jesus, saying,
"Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!"
So this year we called our class "Behold." Then Shelley came up with a simple logo that we use for our class notebooks, website, and promotional materials:
It's the perfect visual for the process of elimination which the Bible uses to reveal the Messiah to Israel. The field is narrowed and narrowed and narrowed until finally--Behold!--there can be only one.
The scriptures, through name & genealogy, through prophecy and covenant and character and even curse, perform this ongoing process of elimination. The process leaves only one person who is qualified to be the Messiah/Christ. [Christ and Messiah are the same word in the Greek and Hebrew languages, respectively. "Christ," then, is not a name like "Smith" or "Jones." "Christ" is a title, like "King." It is helpful to refer, as the Bible often does, to "Christ Jesus," for that gives the proper relationship between his title, Christ, and his name, Jesus. It is even more helpful to refer to him as "Messiah Jesus." Referring to him in that way gives us a handle on the unique significance of his title and his name.]
The first verse of the New Testament is a list of names. To the disciplined and systematic Bible student there is nothing more thrilling than this--
The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham
--because that line is the summation of the entire point of the Old Testament!
A name doesn't tell who I am as much as it tells who I am not. I am Franklyn Pfeil. Knowing that, you still don't know exactly who I am, because I can probably google a few more of 'me' (perish the thought!) But you know from my name that of the world's 7 billion people, there are very close to 7 billion that I am not! So, it's not what's in a name--it's what's not in a name.
Jesus called Himself Son of Man. In fact, it was his favorite self-reference. The title has bottomless depths of meaning. One thing it signifies is that he is in line to fulfill the "seed of the woman" prophecy in Genesis 3:15.
So who does that name eliminate? Couldn't "seed of the woman" or "Son of Man" be any person? Certainly, but "Son of Man" is the biggest eliminator of all--because it meant that the Messiah would be a human being, eliminating countless gazillions of angels and other spiritual entities.
He had to be a Son of Abraham, eliminating a significant percentage of the world's peoples (Gen. 18:18).
Of Abraham's sons, he had to come through Isaac, not Ishmael. So another great chunk of humanity is out of the picture.
Of Isaac's sons, he had to come through Jacob, not Esau.
Jacob was also called "Israel." "Israel," seen genealogically, is the small pool of people where Messiah could come from. That's all Israel is. Thus, with just a few names, we have gone from the nearly infinite number of possibilities in the universe to just a relative few--from a nation which was soon to be enslaved in Egypt.
And of the twelve tribes of Israel, Messiah would come through the tribe of Judah (Gen. 49:10). The concentric circles are getting smaller. The target is coming into view.
Of Judah's descendants, he would come through David (2 Sam .7). While Jesus' favorite self-reference, as mentioned, was "Son of Man," the people--the man and woman on the street--referred to Messiah as "Son of David." It was Son of David that the multitudes were looking for (Matthew 12:23; 21:9).
Even amongst David's sons there was further elimination: he would not come through the line of Solomon, because of a curse on that branch of the family (see Jeremiah 22:30).
He would be born in a little town named Bethlehem. (Micah 5:2)
He would be born a designated number of years following the decree to rebuild Jerusalem (see Daniel 9)--which had been destroyed at the time of Israel's exile to Babylon.
Furthermore, he would calm the seas and heal the sick. (Isaiah, Psalms, etc.) [Please note that some of today's references are not exacting, because there are just so many of them! So when I say "Isaiah" or "Moses" or "Psalms" as a reference, that's the point!--the Bible is shot through with these references.]
He would offer himself as a sacrifice, paying the wages of sin not his own. (See Isaiah 53 and all of Leviticus and all of the Mosaic system of sacrifice). He would die by a means of death unknown at the time. Capital punishment in Israel was by stoning. They didn't have a name for whatever was going on in Psalm 22, but it was not stoning. It remained for the nation of Rome (not yet in existence at the time of the writing of Psalm 22) to invent what we now call crucifixion.
Himself without sin, death had no claim on him. So, three days later, he was alive again. (Psalm 16, Psalm 72:15, Hosea 6:2, Psalm 22:22, Jonah, the entire Old Testament...)
The Bible so obviously, so meticulously, so systematically whittles it down to just one: Jesus, of Nazareth of Galilee, circa 0 to 33 A.D.
Scripture placed a target on his back. The targeted one then carried his cross to Golgotha-- ground zero of the universe, of creation, time, space, and eternity; where the heart of the heart of God was revealed.
We don't know his birthday. We celebrate Christmas, but the Bible gives us no real indication of even the month of his birth.
What we do know is his deathday. The Lamb of God had to be offered on Passover. The Passover prophecy tell us precisely which day the great Messiah would suffer for our sins. But it tells us much more: it tells us there are 364 days when Messiah would not die, could not die.
Through covenant and genealogy, God boiled it down to a handful of people. Through prophecy, he boiled it down to a scant few years, a sliver in time. Through the system of sacrificial offerings, he boiled it down to 1/365th of the year. And then, through prophecy and the system of feasts, he said that the man who fulfilled all of the above would also fulfill the ultimate identifier: he would rise from the dead.
Psalm 72 shows what conditions will prevail when Messiah rules the earth:
He will deliver the needy when he cries,
The poor also, and him who has no helper.
He will save the souls of the needy.
He will redeem their life from oppression and violence;
And He shall live.
See that last line? That's the ultimate identifier--and the ultimate eliminator.
Because after the Bible's process of elimination established the identity of the unique Lamb of God, the Lamb of God shouldered a cross which eliminated your death.
Let's not skip the genealogies, or the Levitical sacrificial offerings, or the calendar of feasts, the construction of the tabernacle, the histories of kings and exiles, the so-called (by man, not by God) 'minor prophets.'
They are pictures of the great Giver, who is the great Eliminator--Messiah Jesus.
For he gives and he takes away. Blessed be the name of the LORD.
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