What we are trying to do during this Advent Season is give a broad sweep of the Old Testament in order to identify just exactly what our spiritual Fathers & Mothers were looking for in the promised coming Deliverer. Indeed, the reading of the Old Testament is a reading of the expectation for this one God promised who would set the world aright.
Our hope is here that by understanding their expectation as formed by God’s revelation we will have a better idea of who it is we worship… Jesus the Christ.
This is a goal of the Christian life… to know Him and to make Him known. Too often we worship a Jesus of our own crafting. By understanding the sweep of Scripture we can help avoid worshiping a Jesus of our own making and worship the same Jesus they were anticipating due to God’s Revelation.
Last week we began to look at the Pentateuch and we noted several truths in regards of whom the OT Saints were looking.
1.) Gen 3 teaches us that this coming promised one would be a man of violence. He would come to crush the head of the enemy. He Himself, upon His arrival said He had come to bring a sword thus confirming that the Jesus we serve is more a 11th century Crusader than he is a 21st century Dr. Phil.
2.) Gen. 12 taught us that this coming promised one would be blessing to all the nations. The coming one was not intended to be a provincial deliverer. He would come not to just bless Israel but to bless all the nations as nations. The deliverance this promised one would bring would be a deliverance that would be as wide as the curse is found. Here we begin to see the eschatological optimism that should be characteristic of all of those who believe in the Messiah. The coming deliverer that they expected would be a deliverer who would rescue all the nations. Christmas time then is, in part, a time when we should remember that the Christ who finally came in the first advent is a Christ who leads the nations in His victory train, blessing them each and all as He rules over them.
3.) We might also say that Gen. 12 teaches us that genealogy is important. This promised one would rise up out of the seed of the Hebrews. So, anyone who would make the claim of deliverer must be able to trace his genealogical descent back to Abraham.
4.) But it gets more specific then that as we looked at last week. This deliverer they were anticipating would come from the royal line of Judah. Gen. 49 teaches that the expected one who will set the world right will be the lion of the tribe of Judah and that line will be a royal line.
The idea of a man of violence who crushes His enemies as coming from a royal line is encapsulated in Numbers 24,
A star shall come forth from Jacob, And a scepter shall rise from Israel, And crush through the forehead of Moab, And tear down all the sons of Sheth. And Edom shall be a possession, Seir, it enemies, also shall be a possession; While Israel performs valiantly. One from Jacob shall have dominion, And shall destroy the remnant from the city” (Numbers 24:16-19).
5.) In Exodus we see a type of the deliverer who is to come in Moses. He will stand in as God’s representative and do battle with God’s enemies. As a type of the coming deliverer Moses will provide Exodus out of the bondage of sin and will set God’s people free. Moses also gives us a type of the coming deliverer inasmuch as Moses is a Prophet… a spokesman for God… God’s mouthpiece. Moses teaches us that the coming deliverer, first promised in Genesis 3, will be a Prophet
“The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your countrymen, you shall listen to him” (Dt. 18:15)
But Moses also, as a type, teaches us that the coming deliverer would be Priest speaking to God for the people. A Priest is person who mediates between God and his people so that God will receive them into his special holy presence to grant them his blessing.
11 Then Moses pleaded with [d]the Lord his God, and said: “Lord, why does Your wrath burn hot against Your people whom You have brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? 12 Why should the Egyptians speak, and say, ‘He brought them out to harm them, to kill them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth’? Turn from Your fierce wrath, and relent from this harm to Your people. 13 Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, Your servants, to whom You swore by Your own self, and said to them, ‘I will multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven; and all this land that I have spoken of I give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it forever.’ ” 14 So the Lord relented from the harm which He said He would do to His people.
So, having only moved through Numbers we learn that the promised head crusher of Gen. 3:15 would be a man of violence, who would be from a traceable Hebrew line … a traceable Kingly line, and would speak as both a Prophet and a Priest. We have learned that He would be a blessing to all the Nations.
Already, in this sweeping overview, we see in place the idea that the coming promised deliverer that our Old Testament brethren expected would have to be a Prophet, Priest, and King. Christmas time is a time when we remind ourselves that the deliverer they expected would be a Prophet, Priest, and King and if it is the case that we would be their children then we should learn Jesus as Prophet, Priest, and King. We should seek to understand those categories. We should seek to worship Christ in those capacities. In order to be Christmas tide Christians, we should be able to articulate how it is that Jesus the Christ was and remains to His people a Prophet, a Priest, and a King. We should be able to explain why each office is instrumental in the accomplishing of His assigned tasks. We might even be able to find the idea of Christ as Prophet, Priest, and King as a deliverer for the Nations in the birth narrative of Jesus the Christ.
Here we see the tattered remnants of Christendom making merry during this Christmas season, but how many Christians making merry can give just a 101 explanation of Jesus Christ as the Great High King, as the mouthpiece of God, as our Great High Priest?
Before we leave the Pentateuch let us see one more glimpse of what was to be expected of this deliverer.
As the promised one would come as a King we would expect Him to come with the King’s law. He Himself testifies that this is so when in his first advent He says that not one jot nor tittle will pass away. That law the King would come championing. The high respect for the Law that the expected one would have is wrapped up in His role as King. As you recall the King in Scripture was required to
write for himself a copy of this law in a book, (Dt. 17:18).
That same law that the King came to honor commanded the conduct that God’s people would be characterized by. This law if honored would mean God’s blessing and if dishonored would mean God’s heavy discipline upon His people. The deliverer was expected to be a deliverer who would honor God’s law. This honoring of the law extended to His being the great sacrifice anticipated in that law system. Thus the sacrificial system provided yet another picture of the expected deliverer who would later be called the lamb of God. Here we begin to see, what perhaps might be thought of as a contradictory picture. The expected one would be a warrior King, the mouthpiece of God, the Great High Priest, a champion and deliverer of God’s people and yet he would be the brazen Serpent in the book of Numbers 21:25ff lifted up that all might look to and be healed. This champion would be the lamb of God taking away the sins of all who would look and live.
So, we have added to our previous expectation of the 1st Advent of the deliverer that He would champion God’s law as King and would himself be the final sacrifice since the blood of bulls and goats could never completely take away sin.
This is the deliverer they were looking for on that first Christmas. It’s doubtful that they understood all they were looking for. Do we understand after the first Advent the one who we worship on this Christmas?
Well, that is the Pentateuch and Christmas. A great deal more might be said but with these first five books of the Bible we begin to see the expectations of the deliverer that the Saints of the OT had.
When we move out from the Pentateuch into the books of History we receive more information about the expected one.
Joshua, and Judges are heavy on the theme of the expected one being a deliverer. Israel disobeys God’s law and then come under the foot of some tyrant. Israel cries out and God sends a deliverer to rescue them from their bondage. This is the theme that we looked briefly in Exodus. These deliverers are types of the coming Messiah who will crush the head of the serpent and so provide exodus for God’s people from oppression.
Canaan, in the history of Redemption, is a type of serpent infested land and Joshua and the subsequent Judges are serpent head crushers. They are deliverers and so provide a type of Christ.
Joshua, Judges, and Ruth focus on the the land Promise in Gen. 12. Modern Christians don’t see the land promise any more of much significance but it is my conviction that the Land promise has been expanded so that the Messiah and His people inherit all the Earth as His own. Allow me to steal from what will be emphasized in a subsequent sermon in this series and that is the reality that all the earth will become the Deliverers so that the land promise in the OT is the antitype to the type of all of the earth as the Great King’s possession.
For the earth will be filled With the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, As the waters cover the sea. Habakkuk 2:14
All the ends of the world Shall remember and turn to the LORD, And all the families of the nations Shall worship before You. Psalm 22:7
So, we learn here that the coming deliverer King has a Kingdom and that Kingdom covers the Earth.
This belief distinguishes us from the amillennialists who believe that Christ’s Kingdom is primarily a spiritual Kingdom. As those with a biblical eschatology we believe that the spiritual Kingdom incarnates itself corporeally so that Christ as a Spiritual King is a King over real real estate and peoples. This is the Jesus who arrived at the first Advent and it is this Jesus whom we worship.
Let us say just a wee bit more about the books of History and what they tell us of the King they were expecting.
Perhaps the most important thing about the Messiah-Deliverer that we learn from the Davidic Kingdom is the Promise given to David by God that he would always have a seed to rule from His throne.
David before becoming King is promissory of becoming the anti type deliverer as he has in his resume serpent head crushing.
Just as Moses before him had faced the Serpent clad Pharaoh so David faces the serpent attired Goliath. The armor that Goliath wore could well have been covered with serpent skin. David, as an anti-type of the Serpent head crusher to come literally crushes the head of Goliath.
Eventually God makes covenant with David’s house so that we learn that the coming deliverer will have to have the papers to show he belongs to David’s house.
“The LORD also declares to you that the LORD will make a house for you. When your days are complete and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your descendant after you, who will come forth from you, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for My name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be a father to him and he will be a son to Me; when he commits iniquity, I will correct him with the rod of men and the strokes of the sons of men, but My loving kindness shall not depart from him, as I took it away from Saul, whom I removed from before you. And your house and your kingdom shall endure before Me forever; your throne shall be established forever” (2 Samuel 7:11b-16).
Later Jesus will become known as the “son of David” (cf. Luke 1:32; 2:4; 18:38).
In the short term the promise had to do with David’s sons and subsequent seed. Men who committed iniquity. Men like Solomon, Rehoboam and the Kingly line of Judah. But this promise includes the word “forever” and so gives the reader expectation that the future deliverer will be, as we have established a King.
During this period many if not most of the Psalms were written and they provide much insight into the first advent of this coming deliverer.
Psalm 2
In this Psalm we learn that the coming deliverer will crush the wicked who oppose his righteous rule by refusing to Kiss the Son. The Nations are told to worship God’s installed King now or face the wrath of that coming King and so perish in the way.
And yet Psalm 22 gives us that paradox of a suffering deliverer on the Cross.
Psalm 22 Here we hear the words of Christ on the Cross; “My God, my God, why has Thou forsaken me?” thus identifying the Savior with the One whose sufferings are described in this Psalm.
Here the seeming contradiction is accentuated regarding the person of the promised deliverer. On one hand we have this Authoritative King. While, on the other hand, we have the promised deliverer as a suffering servant.
Psalm 45 is written for the celebration of the deliverer King’s wedding. As such it centers on the splendor and majesty of the coming King (vss. 3-6), and upon the fact that His throne is eternal (v. 6). An eternal throne? An eternal throne implies an eternal King and here we get a hint that the Deliverer will be very God of very God as well as very man of very man.
There in Psalm 45 the bride of the king loves righteousness and hates wickedness (a picture of the church?) and has been chosen by Him as His bride. The splendor and beauty of the bride is described as she has been prepared for her presentation to the King.
Psalm 72 Portrays for us the reign of the righteous King, who judges the people with righteousness and justice and who is the protector of the afflicted. He is the one who will bring deliverance to His people.
Psalm 110 speaks of the installation of the Messiah at the right hand of God, who will rule over His enemies. Not only is He to rule as king, but He is also an eternal priest after the order of Melchizedek (v. 4). He will come to the earth to destroy His enemies.
So, we see expanded what we found in the Pentateuch. We see the deliverer promised as a coming King who will crush the head of the serpent and His wicked people. We see the deliverer as one who will protect and avenge the righteous afflicted. We see a descendant of King David whose reign had no end.
The is He who they were looking for in the 1st Advent. This is who has even now been installed on His Holy Hill. This is the one who is crushing the wicked and will continue to crush the wicked as the wicked attack His people. This is the one whose law Word must be championed as the Great Eschatological King so that it sways over all the nations.
And this is the one we worship during this Advent season. He is not a Jesus of our own making. He is this Jesus and we ourselves must learn this King and not replace Him w/ a Jesus of our own making lest we perish in the way.
