Jesus Our Messiah
December 8, 2019 • Shane Sikkema • Isaiah 9:2–7
Summary: Why do we long for a hero? Why do our heroes always let us down? This Sunday, we will begin a new Advent series, and look at how all these longings point to Jesus. He is the quintessential hero, the chosen one, the Messiah. Who He is makes Him the only hero who can truly save us, and what’s He’s done proves He’s the only hero who will never let us down. Audio Transcript: You're listening to audio for Mosaic Boston Church. If you'd like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston and our neighborhood churches, or donate to this ministry, please visit http://mosaicboston.com. We are starting a new sermon series today. I'm excited. Advent is here. Christmas is coming. We've got our first snow day in the books, and I love December in Boston. It is that like one magical time of year where everything slows down, people chill out a little bit. You might even have someone smile and say hi to you on the T as they shove you out of their way. I don't know. I'm not a particularly sentimental guy, but I can appreciate the sentiment around Christmas, and a lot of us have a lot of nostalgic, cherished memories of Christmases growing up. For me, one of my things that I always look forward to as a kid, and this might make some of you sad because I don't think this is even a thing anymore, but I loved, I waited. I couldn't wait for that massive JC Penney catalog to come in the mail, just page after page of pure plastic joy. It always got my greedy little heart like right in the Christmas spirit. I'd take that thing and I would just comb through it and I'd assess the inventory, and I'd very carefully make my decision. I'd find a big red marker and I'd go through and I'd circle everything that I wanted on my list. The strategy was you had to first circle a few little things, like a few practical things, because then grandma would see how humble and pure your heart was and your odds would just be that much better when it came to circling that ridiculous thing that was like way over priced and out of your league. Grandma always came through though. It's hard to talk about Christmas without talking about gifts. And we can bemoan, right, the materialism and the commercialization of the holiday season, but the reality is at the center of the Christmas story is a gift, an unimaginably costly gifts that God loved the world to such an extent that he gave his most valued treasure, his beloved, his only begotten son, Jesus Christ. Over the next four weeks, we are going to be looking at four distinct ways in which Jesus is God's gift to us. Next week, Pastor Andy is going to be talking about how God gave Jesus to be our prophet. The week after that, Pastor Jan is going to be talking about how God gave Jesus to be our priest. And then the week of Christmas, our Mosaic Teen director Tyler Burns is going to be talking about how God gave Jesus to be our king. Prophet, priest and king. Jesus is not just a prophet, priest, and king, but he is the prophet, priest, and king that every other prophet, priest, and king points toward and finds their fulfillment in. So remember those three titles, those three offices, prophet, priest, and king. We're going to be talking about those over the next couple of weeks. Today though, we're going to start by looking at how first and foremost God gave Jesus to be our Messiah. Now, I don't know what comes to mind when you hear that word, because it's not a word that we really use very often in our modern vernacular. You might hear it has almost like a mystical, a mysterious sound to it, but it's actually a very meaningful title. We're going to be looking at it today, and as we do it, we're going to be looking at a passage of scripture found in Isaiah chapter nine. Isaiah nine was a prophetic passage written about the birth of Jesus Christ, but it was actually written hundreds of years before the birth of Jesus Christ and it communicates the hope, the hope that ancient Israel had as they longingly waited for the Messiah for that first advent, the Adventist, the Parousia, the unveiling of the Messiah to be born. To really get us in the Christmas spirit, we're going to be framing up our time with three familiar points this morning. Point number one, Long lay the world in sin and error pining. Point two, a thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices. And point three, his law is love and his gospel is peace. We're going to be in Isaiah chapter nine. If you have your Bibles, you can follow along. Otherwise, you can follow along on the screen as well. Isaiah nine starting at verse two. "The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. Those who dwelt in the land of deep darkness, on them light has shown. You've multiplied the nation. You've increased its joy. They rejoice before you as with the joy at the harvest as they are glad when they divide the spoil, for the yoke of his burden and the staff of his shoulders, the rod of his oppressor, you have broken as on the day of Midian. For every boot of the trampling warrior and battle tumult and every garment rolled in blood will be burned as fuel for the fire." "For to a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulders. And his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end on the throne of David and over his kingdom to establish it and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this." Would you please pray with me before we get into the sermon? God, we thank you for your Holy inerrant, inspired, and authoritative word, and we pray today that by the power of your Holy Spirit, you would write these words, these truths on our hearts. Help us to understand them. Help us to not only that, but help us to believe and to love and to obey them. God, we pray that as we do, the hope, the love, the joy, the peace of Jesus Christ would come to rule in our lives and in our church. We ask this in his name. Amen. Just to set the context, of the prophet Isaiah, this is a prophet writing in the Old Testament to the nation of Israel, and he's writing to a people who are on the brink of doom. The Assyrian empire, this massive war machine, is looming on their horizon ready to strike, and it is going to come down and it's going to crush them at any moment and carry them off into exile. It's hard for us to relate to their context of what it would be like to live in such a dangerous and volatile place. While we might not be able to relate to their specific context, all of us can relate to one degree or another of what that those feelings of fear and anxiety are like. The prophet, he describes this. He paints this vivid picture of the land. It's a land that is covered in deep and constant darkness. Even that, the weightiness of that, it's easily lost on us. We live in a world where the light is always just a flip of the switch away. Now, they lived in a world that was lit only by fire, and it's hard to imagine the despair, but we need to try to feel what he wants us to feel here. The feeling that he's trying to convey is that of hopelessness, of lostness. We need to understand this, because to properly understand this prophecy, we need to understand this is not just about Israel. He's also talking about us. One of the things that you need to understand when you're reading scripture, and particularly when you're reading prophecy in scripture, is that prophecy in scripture almost always has a threefold fulfillment. What that means is there's usually an immediate fulfillment that happens within the same historical context of its original audience, but if you really look closely at these prophetic passages, you realize there's something deeper going on, that there's the immediate fulfillment, but there's also this greater fulfillment. We see that greater fulfillment often being fulfilled by Jesus Christ, either through his birth, through his life, through his ministry, through his death, through his resurrection, or through his reign over the church. Then even beyond that, there is an ultimate fulfillment that we see in many of these prophecies that will not take place until Christ returns in glory. We see the prophet Isaiah. He's writing, and on the one hand, he is addressing the contemporary political climate of his day and he's trying to warn the people of Israel. He's trying to prepare the people of Israel to see how God's sovereign hand of judgment and of redemption is working through their circumstance. But when you really look closely at this passage, you see there's something deeper going on as well, that the physical oppression of the Assyrian empire, as bad as it was going to be, and it was going to be bad, it was merely a temporary manifestation of the spiritual oppression that all humanity faces from Satan, sin, and death. The reality is that the crisis of humanity is, when properly understood, even greater than the crisis of Israel, that all of us, we have an inward enemy of sin. We have a sinful nature. Our hearts are these darkened battlefields, enemy occupied territory. Most of us might even be afraid to really take a hard look inside, because when we do, we see these desires that are twisted, that are perverted, that are sometimes even evil, and it can scare us. Even at our best, our motives are tinges with selfishness, with pride, with greed. We understand we have this inward enemy. We also have an outward enemy. Scripture talks about there's demonic powers at play in reality that are against us, that Satan, he's described as our adversary, our tempter, our accuser. He roams around like a roaring lion seeking who to devour. We have an inward enemy, an outward enemy, and then we have the ultimate enemy of death, completely inescapable, always looming on the horizon, able to strike at any moment. Pastor Jan did a great job. He talked about this in detail last week. These are enemies that we cannot defeat, that we cannot battle on our own. We know this about death, but it's true about Satan and sin as well. We need something from outside ourselves to save us. One of my favorite Christmas carols, it puts it like this. It says, "Oh, come though rod of Jesse," referring to the Messiah. "Oh, cones are out of Jessie. Free thine own from Satan's tyranny. From depths of hell thy people save and give them victory over the grave." We need something to rescue us from these three enemies that we face. You've probably thought about this before. If not, just take a moment to think about the stories that we tell through books, TV, movies, comic books, whatever. Why are we so obsessed with heroes? Why are we so fascinated with superheroes? Why do we have so many tales of a chosen one, born for the sole purpose of fulfilling some great destiny on behalf of mankind? You think about Beowulf, King Arthur, William Wallace, Aragorn, Luke Skywalker, Neo, Link, my favorite Goku. As I was writing this, it was Tuesday and our kids were home from school because they had a snow day. My wife and I, we both worked from home, and so the great thing about working from home is when your kids don't have school, you still have work, and so you've got to try to figure that out. They get to watch a lot of movies. Disney+ is a great babysitter and relatively inexpensive. I'm sitting there writing my sermon, they're sitting next to me and they're watching The Lion King. What is The Lion King? You think about it, a chosen son, born to be king, celebrated at birth, fighting for his rightful throne. He falls at the hands of evil, oppression. All seems lost. He's presumed to be dead. Then he comes back. He saves his people. He establishes a kingdom of justice and peace. It's as if we cannot even help ourselves from telling these messianic tales. They're written on our hearts. We tell them to our kids. We're inspired by them ourselves. But the strange thing is we always want to keep them confined to that realm of myth, of legend, of fairy tale. Like something inside them screams out that there's something inherently true about them, yet we're on the other hand a little bit afraid to believe them. We all have these longings for a Messiah impressed into our being and yet feel it's maybe just empty, optimistic sentiment to believe in such a thing. That's for children, but not really for adults. I would submit that part of the reason is because we're right, that these stories really are in a sense too good to be true, that such a one could not actually exist. The Old Testament is packed with prophetic announcements and descriptions of a Messiah who would come. And actually the earliest of these happens right in the very beginning of the opening pages of scripture in Genesis chapter three. Immediately after the fall, as God is pronouncing the curse upon the serpent who tempted Eve, Adam and Eve, God says this. He says, "I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring. And he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel." This is known as the protoevangelium, meaning the first gospel, that a child would be born, an offspring of Eve who would be destined to crush the serpent's head and save humanity. Now, we read that and we immediately want to jump to Jesus, but like hold on for a second. Think about what is said in the very next chapter, the very first verse. Genesis 4:1 says this. It says, "Now Adam knew Eve, his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain saying, 'I've gotten a man with the help of the Lord.'" What are they thinking? Maybe this is the one. This is the offspring that God promised. He's going to come. He's going to crush the serpent's head. He's going to bring us back to Eden. He's going to restore our relationship with God. And then you read the story, and not only does Cain fail to crush the serpent's head, he becomes enslaved by the serpent to crush his brother's head instead. He murders his brother Abel. Then following that, you read through the rest of the Old Testament and it's just failed Messiah after failed Messiah after failed Messiah. Even the greatest of the prophets, priests, and kings, they all sinned. They all fell short, and none fulfilled that promise. This is the paradox, that only an offspring of Eve can stand in the place of humanity to pay the price of our redemption. Only a human life could be a substitute for humanity's sin. But the only person worthy to do such a thing would have to be perfectly innocent and perfectly powerful. In order to pay for the sins of others, they would first need to be guiltless of sin themselves, and then in order to bear the weight of that redemption, they would need to do so without being crushed and destroyed by it themselves. What we see is that the curse of Adam in the sinful nature that we all inherit, it on the one hand puts us each in dire need of redemption, and on the other hand it makes us completely unable of attaining it. We have to sit in that darkness and feel that despair, that hopelessness, or we're never going to experience the thrill of hope that we're meant to experience in verses six and seven. That brings us to point number two. Looking again at Isaiah, he starts in verse two. It says, "The people who've walked in darkness have seen a great light. Those who dwelt in the land of deep darkness, on them has light shown." Jumping down to verse six, "For to us a child is born, unto us a son is given. The government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. And of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end on the throne of David and over his kingdom to establish it in uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore." I mentioned earlier that it's hard for us to relate to what it would be like living in a world where light was not readily available, to face darkness. About the closest I've ever come to experiencing this was in college. Some of my friends from high school and I, we used to like to go caving. When I say go caving, I don't mean like a commercial cave where you pay money, and you have a guide, and you walk through a path, and the cave is all lit up and beautiful. I mean you go to a forest, you find a hole in the ground, and you'd go into it, and you'd just explore. There were times ... First of all, to do this, you're wearing knee pads. You're wearing a helmet. You're going down, and sometimes you're your army crawling through tunnels. The reward at the end, you'll crawl for 30, 40 feet and all of a sudden it will open up into this massive cavernous room, and it's just amazing. It's a breathtaking experience. But you only need to go about 50 feet into a cave before there is absolutely zero light, zero natural light, complete pitch, black darkness. And at that point, you become completely orderly dependent on this tiny little lamp strapped to your helmet. We would walk for hours sometimes, no idea how much distance it was, but probably up to a mile underground in the darkness. Now, imagine you're an hour into a cave and the lights go out. Maybe even just close your eyes for a moment. I hate it when pastors do this, but I'm preaching today, so try it. Just close your eyes. Imagine this. You're an hour in and the lights go out. You have no sense of direction. You can begin groping your way through the dark, but you really don't know if you're getting closer to escape or if you're getting further away. Minutes turn into hours. Hours turn into you lose track of time. You're hungry. You're cold. You're tired. You're lost. Now, imagine the thrill of hope if far off in the distance you swear you see a glimmer of light. Isaiah says there is a light that is coming into the darkness. Hope is coming. Rescue is coming. You can open your eyes. This hope is coming through a king with a massive army that's going to crush the Assyrians... No, he says it's coming through a baby. It's going to come through a child that will be born to us, a son that will be given to us. It's like why should that bring any hope at all? And the reason that this child is going to bring hope is because there's going to be something about this child that is utterly different from every child born before him and every child born after him, because Isaiah says that this child will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. I know it's Christmas, and we all kind of want to just show up and hear a nice sermon about little eight pound, six ounce, beautiful baby Jesus, but I want to do some like theology today. I want to teach some doctrine today. I want us to think about this for a minute, because this is really important. We're going to do some Christology. Isaiah chapter nine is a Christological prophecy about something that theologians call the hypostatic union of Christ. What this means is that the Messiah would have a truly fully nature. A child would be born. And the Messiah would have a truly fully divine nature. His name would be Mighty God. These two natures would be perfectly united in one person. Not part God, part man, but God-man, fully human, fully divine. A couple chapters earlier, Isaiah 7:14 says, "Therefore, the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel, meaning God with us." Micah 5:2, another prophesy says, "But you, O Bethlehem Ephratah, who were too little to be among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel, whose coming forth is from old, from ancient days." Paul says in Colossian 2:9 that, "For in him, Christ, the full, the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily." Hebrews 1, "Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his son whom he appointed the heir of all things through whom he also created in the world." And John 1, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God and all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it." Verse 14, "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory of the only son from the Father full of grace and truth." Why does this matter? Why bring in the hypostatic union of Christ? What's the point? I mentioned earlier that the curse of Adam and the sinful nature that we inherit, it puts us in need of redemption and also incapable of attaining it. That on the one hand, only a truly human person can stand in humanity's place to pay the price of their redemption, but it would take only a truly perfect divine person who would be able and worthy to do such a thing. And only Jesus is both. He had to be both. I don't know if you're familiar with the Heidelberg Catechism, but it's a very useful discipleship tool that the church has used for generations. They come to this doctrine and they frame it by asking and answering two questions. The first question they ask is, why must he, why must the Christ, the Messiah, the Redeemer be a righteous man? The answer is that he must be a true man, because the justice of God requires that the same human nature which has sinned should pay for sin. He must be a righteous man, because one who himself is a sinner, he cannot pay for others. So then why must he be God? That's the second question. So that by the power of his divinity, he might bear the weight of God's anger in his humanity and earn for us and restore to us righteousness in life. A slightly modernized version of this comes from Redeemer Presbyterian in New York City. They put together what they've called the New City Catechism, and they frame it with these questions. First, they ask, why must the Redeemer be truly human? That in human nature, he might on our behalf perfectly obey the whole law and suffer the punishment for human sin, and also that he might sympathize with our weaknesses. Why must the Redeemer be truly God? That because of his divine nature, his obedience and suffering would be perfect and effective, and also that he would be able to bear the righteous anger of God against sin and yet overcome death. Jesus had to be fully God and he had to be truly human, because there is no other possible scenario through which he could have fully redeemed us from sin and from death. It is only because of his full humanity that Jesus is able to suffer and to sympathize with us, and it is only because of his full divinity that he is able to satisfy God's wrath and secure our salvation. In his divinity, he is perfectly united to the Father so that by grace through faith we may be perfectly united to him and his humanity, and therefore united to the Father, to the Spirit as well. This is what we're talking about being adopted into the family of God, that we become children of God through Jesus Christ. C.S. Lewis, he put it a lot more succinctly like this. The son of God became a man to enable men to become sons of God. That's the hypostatic union. Doctrine is important. We shouldn't be afraid to study a doctrine and to apply our minds to scripture, but we can't just let that live up here in our minds. We need to take the delight of that truth and we need to work it down into the darkness of our hearts. And this brings us to point three. It's important for us to understand who Jesus is in order to satisfy the reason, the logic of our minds. It's also important for us to understand what Jesus did to satisfy the longings of our hearts. In Isaiah, he gives us a glimpse of who the Messiah would be at the beginning of his book, but then he goes into vivid detail about what the Messiah would do at the end of his book. In Isaiah chapter 53 it says this, "That surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we esteemed him stricken and smitten by God and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds, we are healed." "We all like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all." The world watched with bated breath to see if Cain would crush the head of the serpent, but he crushes the head of his brother instead. Jesus Christ is born, and he's willingly crushed for his brothers. And in doing so, he crushes the serpent as well. In doing so, he finds a way to slay the serpent and save the sinner, to save all those who would repent and believe in his name. And so we see that who Jesus is makes him worthy, but what Jesus did makes him lovely. This is where it begins to go from our head to our hearts, and we need to fight for this every day. We need to take that truth, and armed with that truth go into that dark battlefield of our hearts and do battle to not only know it, and to understand it, and to agree with it, but to believe it and to love it. Whatever you're going through right now, whatever pain, whatever suffering, whatever despair, whatever darkness it is you're facing, don't miss this. The God of heaven left his throne. He left paradise and stepped down into a cold, dark world. He took on flesh. He bore our griefs. He carried our sorrows. He was crushed and wounded for our healing and peace, and he did this compelled by his love for us. Because often when you're in the dark and when the darkness seems overwhelming, we're all tempted to ask these two questions. Is it that God is not powerful enough to give me justice and peace, or does he not love me enough to care? When you look at the light, when you look at Jesus and what he has done for you, you might not get a clear answer as to why God allows the darkness in your life, and you might not see you exactly what that answer is, but you do see what that answer cannot be, and the answer cannot be that God is not powerful enough to give you justice. He has taken the single darkest moment in human history, the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, and redeemed it to such an extent that he used it as the source of greatest light. He used it as the source of the greatest good, the resurrection of Christ and the redemption of God's people. Do you believe that? Do you believe that he can do that for you? His word promises that he will. The answer cannot be that God's not powerful enough to give us justice, but it also is not, it can't possibly be that he doesn't care, he doesn't love us enough to care, because God loved the world to such an extent that he gave that which he valued most, his beloved son, his only begotten son. Jesus loved to such an extent that he gave his life. The Christmas season should be a joyful time, but for many it's a very jarring time. It can be a painful and isolating time of year for a lot of people. Typically what you see is on the one hand, there's a lot of us who are running to the past. We're chasing after some sentimental nostalgic feelings, and we put all this pressure on Christmas to give us these feelings of peace, of joy, of hope, and we're so romanticizing our memories of Christmases past that we are not even able to enjoy the present. That we put these crazy expectations on other people around us that hurt them. Ultimately, we just feel this dissatisfaction, this emptiness as Christmas comes and goes. Some people are running to the past. A lot of other people are running away from the past. Just get me through the holidays. Just keep me from thinking too much about how jacked up my family is, and how messed up my circumstances are, and from dealing with the pain of my woundedness and of my sin. Maybe your life is not turning out the way you want it to. Now, we can easily use the hustle and bustle of the Christmas season as a distraction to avoid dealing with the woundedness, with the sin in our life. But if we do, we run the risk of missing the true power of the Christmas season, because the true power of Christmas is not that Christ is able to give us a seasonal distraction from the pain of real life. The true power of Christmas is that Christ has come down into the darkness to redeem that pain, to use it for our good, that the light is shining in the darkness and the darkness will not overcome it. Deep down we're all still just children afraid of the dark, waiting, longing for someone to come and to tell us that everything's going to be okay. Christmas is a reminder that the Word became flesh to do just that. That 2,000 years ago, a child was born into a cold, dark night to offer hope, love, joy, and peace to all people who would repent and believe in his name; that Christ appears in the darkness of our lives today to offer hope, love, joy, and peace to our present; and that Christ will return in glory to bring hope, love, joy, and peace to perfection. If you have not experienced that today, this is not something that you have to go out and earn. It's not something that comes through your good work, through your righteousness. It is truly a gift to be received. Scripture says that to all who would receive it, to those who would believe in Jesus' name, he gives the right to become children of God, and you can do that today. We pray that that you would. Now would you please join me in prayer before we continue in worship. God, we thank you for the gift of Jesus, our Messiah. Lord, I pray that if there are any here today who have not received that gift, that they would do so now. For those who have received it and who have believed in your name, God, remind us again that by grace through faith we have become your children, your beloved, and that you as a good father are working all things together for our good. God, when we wander, when we doubt, I pray that you would lead us back to the cross and remind us again of your great love and the price that was paid so that we can be set free from Satan's tyranny to live lives of joyful obedience to you. For your name, for your glory, and for your kingdom, we pray this all in Jesus' name. Amen.
Advent: Joy
December 16, 2018 • Isaiah 35:1–10
Even in the most ecstatic moments of happiness, there's always a caveat or asterisk–there's always a catch. There's always the deep awareness that this delicious moment will come to an end, and we're sad about it. We're sad about our happiness ending, because it isn't happiness that we're after; we're after everlasting joy. Do you have this elusive everlasting joy?
Advent: Love
December 9, 2018 • Isaiah 9:1–7
The best part about the Christmas season is the Christmas spirit. The Christmas spirit infuses the air with generosity, grace, and love. Everyone seems to be a little nicer–even in Boston. People don't push quite as forcefully on the T. They don't lay on the horn quite as long. They don't tailgate quite as closely. Why? What is it about the Christmas Spirit that changes people? And why can't we live like this year-round?
Advent: Hope
December 2, 2018 • Andy Hoot • Isaiah 7:7–10
What is that thing that if you lost it, would make your life no longer worth living? We all put our hope in something––whether it's the God of the Bible or something else. This week, we investigate God's method of providing hope to all people as we kick off our four-week long Advent series.