Sidney UMC - Second Sunday of Advent - 12/09/18 - Sermon - “The Messianic Prophecy" The "Hope is Coming" Series - Part 2 of 5)

Sunday 12/09/18 - Sidney UMC

Sermon Title: “The Messianic Prophecy”

                (“Hope is Coming” Series – Part 2 of 5)

Old Testament Scripture: Malachi 3:1-4

                                            

New Testament Scripture: Philippians 1:3-11

                                                   

Gospel Lesson: Luke 1:68-79

          Once again, happy Second Sunday in this the Season of Holy Advent. As I discussed last Sunday, the Season of Advent is a season leading up to the Season of Christmas that developed out of the worshipping tradition of the Christian Church. In this season we are called to prepare our hearts, our minds, and our souls, for the memory of the coming birth of Christ, we are invited to bring Him into our hearts daily, and we are called to eagerly await his triumphant second coming to earth.

          Last Sunday to emphasize Christ’ birth and his awaited second coming to earth, my sermon title was called, “He came, and He will come again!” In this season of Advent, among the many things that we are called to try to do with God’s help, are to claim anew joy, love, peace, and of course hope. I believe that in Sidney and this world in general right, many of us need hope. Can I get an Amen?

How can we find hope in the birth of Jesus Christ though? How can Jesus come into our lives and change us this very day? How can the anticipation of Christ’s birth and return to earth affect and change us? How can we be changed so that our lives are changed?

          You see for nearly two-thousand years the Christian Church has believed that God’s Son, God in the flesh, Jesus Christ, was born, lived, breath, walked, loved, healed, forgave, and died for our sins. Due to this, we can be forgiven, spiritually cleansed and we can live and reign with God in eternity forever. This means we are not complete stories, and your past, and your mistakes can be washed away through the love and the blood of Jesus Christ. God can recreated you, you can be a new creation through Jesus Christ

The coming birth of our King Jesus, the love he offers us, and his eventual return has given billions and billions of people the world over hope. On our hardest days, we can realize that Christ is right there with us. Whatever we face, we know that God loves us, and that we will be with him for eternity. We know that when it is all said and done that the righteous will walk by faith and that the wicked will be judged. Jesus is coming soon! I have hope, I have joy, for I am a son of the King. You are sons, you are daughters of the Most High King!

          Well I wonder if anyone had any idea that a savior was coming 2000-years ago on Christmas? Meaning they know Jesus would be born, or did it just happen one day? To put it another way, did folks that lived in Jesus’ day have any idea that the savior or the “Messiah” was coming? Did they expect his birth, or not at all? The answer to this question, is yes many of them did.

          In the first half of our Bible, or the Old Testament, we have among many other things a variety of predictions about the coming of the savior. The Old Testament is also called the Jewish or the Hebrew Bible, and it includes the Torah, which is the first five-books of the bible, and the rest of the Hebrew Scriptures. Do you know that hundreds and hundreds of years before Jesus was even born that many were awaiting his arrival, and knew that he was coming? This is why his birth was expected and wasn’t a complete shock to everyone. Some of the Jews said “Emmanuel” was coming soon, which means “God with us”. “O Come, O Come Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel” (UMC Hymnal, pg. 211).

          So many of the Jews for centuries had hope that Emmanuel, the Messiah was coming to save and to redeem them. In this season of Advent we are called to have hope that the Messiah is coming to be born in Bethlehem, coming into our hearts, and coming back again soon. We are called to share this love and hope with each other, and this love and this hope will change us. When are changed, God can use us to do amazing things that we never thought possible.

As I said, and as I will get into a little bit this morning, Jesus birth, life, death, and resurrection were all foretold hundreds of years before his birth in the Old Testament.

          For this reason, in part-2 of my 5-part sermon series on “Hope is Coming,” today I want to talk about “The Messianic Prophecy”. You might be saying, “huh, what did you just say?” Or, “God bless you pastor!” I said the “Messianic Prophecy”. We have two words in this sermon title, Messianic, and Prophecy. Messianic breaks down to the word Messiah, and Prophecy is prophecy. So let’s define these two words. According to the Merriam-Webster online dictionary the world Messiah means:

1a. The expected king and deliverer of the Jews

1b: Jesus

2: a professed or accepted leader of some hope or cause (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/messiah?utm_campaign=sd&utm_medium=serp&utm_source=jsonld).

          So Jesus is the expected king, savior, deliver, and leader that the Jews awaited. He was and is the Messiah.

          So we know what Messiah means, so what does the word prophecy mean? According the Merriam-Webster dictionary, prophecy is:

1. An inspired utterance of a prophet.

2: The function or vocation of a prophet, specifically: the inspired declaration of divine will and purpose.

3: A prediction of something to come (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/prophecy).

          So when we put these two words together into my sermon title of “Messianic Prophecy”, this means the predictions and the understandings of the coming savior of the world. This means that predictions were made for centuries about the coming of the Messiah, the savior, who is Jesus Christ.

          In our Holy Communion or our Great Thanksgiving liturgy in our United Methodist Hymnals it says:

“You delivered us from captivity, made covenant to be our sovereign God,
                  and spoke to us through your prophets” (UMC Hymnal, pg. 9).

          What does this statement that we say on communion Sunday’s mean? It means that God lead the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt, that God made a convent or a promise to be with us, and that He also spoke truths through the prophets of the Old Testament. In the Old Testament we have prophets like Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Malachi, and etc.

          For example, this morning we have a reading from the Prophet Malachi. Malachi like the other Old Testament or Hebrew Bible Prophets makes predictions about the Messiah, the future, and speaks the truth of God. These prophets said and did many things, but some of what they said as I said were Messianic Prophesizes. So why do we specifically have for a reading this morning Malachi 3:1-4? Also, why do we have this scripture during Advent in general? The reason is my brothers and sisters, is that this scripture from Malachi, written hundreds of years before the birth of Christ predicts the birth of Christ. More specifically, it also talks about the one who would prepare the way for Christ, called John the Baptist. John the Baptist is of course the one who baptized Jesus in the Jordan River. Let’s look at Malachi 3:1-4 again. It says:

“See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple. The messenger of the covenant in whom you delight—indeed, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts. But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap; he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the descendants of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, until they present offerings to the Lord in righteousness. Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord as in the days of old and as in former years” (Mal. 3:1-4, NRSV).

          This scripture written by the prophet Malachi predicts that John the Baptist would prepare the way for the coming of the Messiah, of Jesus Christ. The scripture says:

“he is coming” (Mal. 3:1c, NRSV).

          This Messiah will purify, refine, and be an offering for us. Messiah, our hope is coming.

          Our gospel reading from Luke 1:68-79 once again is prophetic in speaking of the coming of Jesus Christ. In this scripture John the Baptist’s father Zechariah is singing this scripture as a song or a hymn. In this scripture, John the Baptist is eight days old, it is therefore the day of his circumcision, as he is a Jew. Zechariah sings of the joy that his son John the Baptist will prepare the way for Jesus, even though Jesus has not even been born yet.  So here is Luke 1:67-79 again, entitled “Zechariah’s Prophecy”:

^“Then his father Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke this prophecy: “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has looked favorably on his people and redeemed them. He has raised up a mighty savior for us
    in the house of his servant David, as he spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets from of old, that we would be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us. Thus he has shown the mercy promised to our ancestors, and has remembered his holy covenant, the oath that he swore to our ancestor Abraham, to grant us that we, being rescued from the hands of our enemies, might serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness
    before him all our days. And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people by the forgiveness of their sins. By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.” (Lk. 1:67-79, NRSV).

In this scripture that John the Baptist’s father Zechariah is once again singing, Zechariah sings that God will redeem his people. He says that a savior is coming, who will save us. Zechariah also sings as he celebrating that his son John will go before Jesus and prepare the way for him.

Now I’m going to get more into John the Baptist next Sunday as a lead into the coming of Christmas, but this Sunday I wanted talk more about “The Messianic Prophecies” that led to Jesus Christ. If you have time today or this week I would encourage you to look up on the internet, Old Testament prophecies fulfilled by Jesus, and you will see many. It’s pretty amazing to see that the savior of the world was foretold over and over hundreds of years before his birth.

Just to illustrate this, here are but a few of the many examples of Old Testament prophecies of Jesus Christ:

1. In Psalm 22:7 speaking of the day of Jesus’ crucifixion, the Psalm says:

All who see me mock at me; they make mouths at me, they shake their heads; (Ps. 22:7, NRSV).

          This was written hundreds of years before Jesus’ trial and crucifixion, yet the gospels say this is how Jesus was treated on the day of his trial and crucifixion.

2. The Prophet Isaiah predicted the healing power that Christ would have in 35:5-6, when he said:

“Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy. For waters shall break forth in the wilderness,
    and streams in the desert;” (Isa. 35:5-6, NRSV).

          Hundreds of years later, Jesus healed many.

3. Since we are in a season that is partially preparing for the birth of Christ, here is what Isaiah 7:14 has to say:

“Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel.”

(Isa. 7:14, NKJV).

          In this scripture written hundreds of years before Jesus’ birth, the prophet Isaiah is saying that the Messiah will be born of a virgin, and she shall call him “Immanuel,” or “God with us”.

          If you read any of the gospels in the New Testament you will also notice fairly often that Old Testament Prophets are quoted, as to connect their prophecies to Jesus. In fact, the gospels also speak of things that Jesus did to directly fulfill the Old Testament prophecies about him. The gospels say things such as, “Jesus did this in order to fulfil the prophecy”.

          Friends, brothers and sisters, this hope that we have in Jesus Christ started long be us, it even started hundreds of years before Jesus was even born. It’s amazing to me that all the predictions, all the signs regarding Christ, one by one have or are being accomplished. One the last, is the return of Jesus Christ.

          In this season of Advent leading into Christmas, we can have joy knowing that anything we have ever done can be forgiven, that Jesus can give us a new heart, a new mind, and renew our spirits. As we are transformed by Christ, we can then transform others.

          I would like to close this message with a quote from the founder of the Methodist Movement, Rev. John Wesley. This quote inspires me in this time of the year. Here it is:

"I want the whole Christ for my Savior, the whole Bible for my book, the whole Church for my fellowship and the whole world for my mission field."

- John Wesley (Read more: https://www.christianquotes.info/quotes-by-author/john-wesley-quotes/#ixzz5YrnIfqo9)

Friends it is my hope and prayer that in this Season of Advent that is soon to be Christmas that we all rediscover Christ anew, for He is the one was, who is, and is to come. Amen.