18 day advent
This one is long, but they will get shorter!
There are 18 days til Christmas, not a particularly special number, but I decided today that I would start a series with the subject of Advent.. I will attempt to post every day until Christmas. The content of my posts will show a prophecy of the coming Messiah, and the fulfilment of the prophecy. All prophecies can be found in the Old Testament or Hebrew Torah, and all fullfilments found in the New Testament of the Bible, particularly the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Some posts will be primarily aspects of the Christmas story, others, will go on to talk about the Messiah's life, death and resurrection. It's all important because the coming King, the Messiah, is far more than just a baby in a manger.
To begin with then, a definition of "Messiah":
Messiah (Hebrew - "Annointed One") -
In Jewish tradition, a person of the line of King David (a "ben yishai" - son of Jesse, father of David) who will return the Jews from exile, rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem and initiate a period of prosperity and peace. In that sense, belief in Messiah was simply belief in restoration of Israel and an end to present troubles.
From this definition, let's start with the genealogy of the Messiah (which I read afresh last night and have seen with a new wonderent!)... the promised redeemer would be a person of the line of King David.
There are no fewer than fourteen recorded references to the Messiah being a descendant of King David, and a further thirteen (or more!) references to Messiah being descendant of many in that line. Here is just ONE of these:
Jeremiah 33:14-15 (Contemporary English Version)
The LORD's Wonderful Promise
14The LORD said:
I made a wonderful promise to Israel and Judah, and the days are coming when I will keep it. I promise that the time will come
when I will appoint a king
from the family of David,
a king who will be honest
and rule with justice.
And the fullfilment...
Matthew 1
The Ancestors of Jesus
Jesus Christ came from the family of King David and also from the family of Abraham. And this is a list of his ancestors. From Abraham to King David, his ancestors were:
Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah and his brothers (Judah's sons were Perez and Zerah, and their mother was Tamar), Hezron;
Ram, Amminadab, Nahshon, Salmon, Boaz (his mother was Rahab), Obed (his mother was Ruth), Jesse, and King David.
From David to the time of the exile in Babylonia, the ancestors of Jesus were:
David, Solomon (his mother had been Uriah's wife), Rehoboam, Abijah, Asa, Jehoshaphat, Jehoram;
Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, Hezekiah, Manasseh, Amon, Josiah, and Jehoiachin and his brothers.
From the exile to the birth of Jesus, his ancestors were:
Jehoiachin, Shealtiel, Zerubbabel, Abiud, Eliakim, Azor, Zadok, Achim;
Eliud, Eleazar, Matthan, Jacob, and Joseph, the husband of Mary, the mother of Jesus, who is called the Messiah.
There were fourteen generations from Abraham to David. There were also fourteen from David to the exile in Babylonia and fourteen more to the birth of the Messiah.
Now, looking deeper, an astounding and incredible fact about this genealogy that authenciates it are that women are mentioned in it. In Hebrew tradition women were hardly ever mentioned, let alone in genealogies. If the gospels had been crafted simply to match the original prophecies, it would not have made sense to New Testament writers to include WOMEN in his line, as this would make their claims less plausible. They are not trying too hard, the facts stand as they are.
The further, to me, simply incredible fact, is that Jesus, the Messiah, is a direct descendant of Uzziah's wife, Bathsheba, the woman whose husband David murdered and who he commited adultery with! No self-respecting Jew would have made that up and expected people to believe it...
What an awesome God, that even in His holiness, he uses the weak and the sinful for good. Nobody is beyond his redeption, and his purpose of love and salvation of all mankind WILL win through, no matter what choices we make...