Promises of a Divine Messiah –
Part 2
Romans 9:3-5; Isaiah 7:14, 9:6; Micah 5:2; John 1:1-5; Colossians 1:1-15;
Hebrews 1:3
We are in our
study in Romans. We haven’t met since July 4th which has been about
three weeks. Prior to that as we were going through Romans, chapter 9, looking
specifically at verse 5. I’m focusing on Paul’s statement of the deity of
Christ. As many times as I’ve read through Romans it reminds me that we all
have a problem with reading things until they become familiar or we’re looking
at other aspects, but in Romans 9:5, Paul says that, related to the Israelites,
“Of whom are the fathers, [referring to the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob,
Joseph and his brothers] and from whom according to the flesh [Jesus’ humanity]
Christ came who is overall the Eternal Blessed God. Amen.” I pointed out that
is better translated, “Christ, the eternally blessed God.” That phrase, “the
eternally blessed God” is appositionally to Christ. Then add the relative
clause “who is over all” at the end because that makes it come across as a very
strong verse in support of the full deity of Jesus Christ. Christ, the
eternally blessed God.
Now when Paul
wrote that in Romans 9 outside of a few scriptures that had been penned already
by the Apostle Paul most of the New Testament had not been written. James had
been written before Paul wrote anything. Then Paul had written Galatians, 1 and
2 Thessalonians, 1 and 2 Corinthians and now Romans. But the gospels were
probably just at this point being written but they had not had any circulation
yet so most of the New Testament was not written. So how do we know that
Christ, that is the Messiah of the Old Testament, is fully God? Well that comes
from Old Testament passages.
There’s such a
move always from liberal theology that claims that it was Paul and the New
Testament that invented the deity of Christ. If you listen to those purveyors
of sound theology, The History Channel, The Discovery Channel, and some of the
other things you see on TV they always assert that the New Testament wasn’t
written until one or two hundred years after the death of the last apostle. Now
that has been disproven by much of modern scholarship, even numerous liberal
theologians who don’t even believe in the infallibility or inspiration of Scripture
have to admit, on the basis of evidence, that the New Testament was probably
all written by the end of the 1st century. One has even gone so far
as to claim that the New Testament was written even earlier than most
conservative, orthodox Biblical theologians would put it. So the evidence is
clearly there.
The deity of
the Messiah as something I pointed out to you was in the Old Testament. Now
last time I said that we ought to have at our fingertips to use in any kind of
witnessing situation three Old Testament passages and three New Testament
passages that support the deity of Christ. When you’re sitting there and
talking to your next door neighbor or you’re talking to somebody you’ve struck
up a conversation with at the grocery store or you’re talking to somebody that
you’re sitting with in the waiting room at the doctor’s office or whomever it
might be and they say, “Why do you Christians think that Jesus is God?” You can
say, “Well, because my pastor said so.” Oh, wrong answer! “Jeff Phipps said
so.” Equally wrong answer. That’s what so many people do. They say, “Oh well,
I’ve got it in my notes at home. I heard it. It’s in Isaiah somewhere. It’s in
the New Testament somewhere. The Bible says so.” That doesn’t work
See, the job of
the pastor-teacher according to Hebrews 4:11 and 12 is to “equip the saints to
do the work of the ministry.” Evangelism is part of your work of ministry and
what I’m doing here is equipping or training you and giving you the information
you need so that you have it in your mind. The only Bible doctrine that you
know is what you know without your notebooks or your Bible. Always remember
that. The only Bible doctrine you know is what’s just off the top of your head.
That’s the only Bible doctrine you really know.
So we need to
learn just three verses from the Old Testament. It’s simple because two of them
are in Isaiah and one is in Micah. Isaiah 7:14, Isaiah 9:6, and Micah 5:2. The
nice thing to remember is that Isaiah and Micah lived at the same time. In
fact, when we get to the Micah passage tonight we’ll see that there are a lot
of similarities between Micah’s message and Isaiah’s message. I was really
pleased to get the feedback I got when I announced that sometime, probably early
October, I’m going to teach a Bible study methods course. In other words, how
you can become a better Bible student and read your Bible more intelligently
and come to dig some things out for yourself. We’ll probably start sometimes in
early October and that will last until February or March. We’ll probably spend
more than an hour in an early Sunday evening class. I think everybody will get
a lot out of it. We did this some years ago. We had a young man who was working
with us at the time who taught that. It was part of his training and he did a
good job. People got a lot out of it. But I want to do this and get it on video
and upgrade the teaching on it a good bit.
One of the
things we do when we look at Bible study methods is to look at four methods.
The first is observation. What does it say? It’s always amazing to me how
little we observe verses. We’ll have a lot of fun with observation. The second
thing is interpretation. What does it mean? Not just what it means to you. That
would be an application question. The key question is what did the original
authors, the human author and the divine author, mean and yes you can discern
accurately and exactly what the original authors meant in most cases. We can
get pretty precise because of the ways Scripture is constructed. Then the next
thing is correlation. That’s comparing Scripture with Scripture. That’s part of
interpretation because once you come to the meaning of a passage you want to
correlate that with other passages.
Sometimes you’ll
prepare scripture with scripture and you’ll go, “Oops. Maybe what I thought
that passage meant isn’t right because it doesn’t fit with this passage or that
passage.” That’s all part of the learning and study process. A lot of times
when you take passages, especially Messianic passages, and your compare
scripture with scripture, you not only discover that they help shed light on
one another but as you look at them in the way they’re revealed you see there
are certain threads that will run through the Scriptures and they get picked up
again and again in these Messianic prophecies.
Now Isaiah is
written at about the same time as Micah. Later on you have other prophecies
such as the ones that are before Isaiah. The prophecy as revealed in Isaiah
says, “The woman
shall conceive…” That indicates there was already a belief there that there was
something significant about a particular woman and that takes you all the way
back to Genesis 3:15 and the promise that the seed of the woman will defeat the
seed of the serpent. That’s a little bit about what we’re doing here and we’re
going to see some of that.
Last time we
looked at Isaiah 7:14 and tonight I want to look at Isaiah 9:6. Both of these
verses are quoted in the gospel birth stories in Matthew and in Luke. Just so
you get a little prevue of coming attractions, when I finish the Proverbs
series which will be sometime in September, we’re going to have an early
Christmas this year by starting the gospel of Matthew. I’m going to use Matthew
as sort of a lens for looking at the life of Christ. Now this isn’t going to be
an in-depth study of everything that Jesus taught and everything He said. I
want to save that for later. I’ve looked at some things in depth and we’ll look
at other things in depth but I find is a need for a more structured approach to
the life of Christ.
For most of my
life I’ve heard that most people know something about the life of Paul, about
the life of Moses, something about the life of Daniel. They can give you the
broad outline but they can’t do daddy on the life of Christ. He was born and He
had a lot of problems with the Pharisees and Sadducees and they crucified Him.
That’s it. So we need to have a little more structure in understanding that so
I want to use the gospel of Matthew to do that.
After a period
of about a year without drilling too deeply I want to teach the life of Christ.
I’ve looked out on the internet and there are some doctrinal pastors who’ve
done a great job and they have three or four or five or six hundred hours on
the life of Christ. The problem with that is that they want to drill down in
such detail that they don’t really have an overview of it anymore. They’ve lost
the structure. We’ve got to have a good structure in our minds so we’re going
to do that on Sunday mornings for about a year to a year and a half.
Then that will
give me a framework to be able to come back at later times and drill down on
other things, such as the Sermon on the Mount, The Upper Room Discourse, the
Olivet Discourse, some of which I’ve taught before. For example I taught the
Upper Room Discourse in the series I did years ago on the gospel of John. So
we’ll be doing some of that. It’s just a little preview of coming attractions.
Okay, we’re
going to look tonight at Isaiah 9:6 and Micah 5:2 to understand the deity of
Christ. The contexts are important but they’re not as significant as the
context of Isaiah 14 so we can hit those pretty quickly. If we have time I want
to move into the three key passages in the New Testament. They’re easy to
remember. They’re all in a first chapter. All you have to remember is John,
Colossians, and Hebrews and if you remember they’re all in the first chapter,
you’ve got it. When I was in seminary I remember Dr. Ryrie who was a real
stickler for detail but when it came to knowing text for key points he would
say, “If you just know the book and the chapter, you can find the verse.”
That’s all he would require on examinations and I always thought that was good.
If you can get the book and the chapter down you can find the verse 99% of the
time. So if you can just remember John 1, Colossians 1, and Hebrews 1 you can
find them. As a matter of fact I’ve sat on a number of ordination councils over
the years and one of the questions that was usually asked was to give three key
passages on the deity of Christ. All that was required at those ordination
councils was book and chapter. So if you just have John, Colossians, and
Hebrews down you’ve got it.
Let’s look at
this first verse for tonight. Isaiah 9:6 is a well-known verse at Christmas
time. “For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us; and the
government will rest on His shoulders; and His name will be called Wonderful,
Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.” Then the next verse goes
on to read, “There will be no end to the increase of His government or of
peace, upon the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to
uphold it with justice and righteousness from then on and forevermore. The zeal
of the Lord of hosts will accomplish this.” Now what’s the most important thing
we need to comprehend when we start to study a passage? Well, one of the most
important things we need to comprehend is the context. Always remember that a
text taken out of context leaves you with a con job. Many people get things
completely distorted because they ignore the context.
The context
here is really a broad context. I’m not just talking about Isaiah 9. I’m
talking about what goes on from Isaiah 7 through Isaiah 11. The background for
this is what we talked about in chapter 7, that there is an alliance between
the Northern Kingdom of Israel and Syria to attack the Southern Kingdom. This
is at a time during the reign of Ahaz when the Northern Kingdom is just about
in its final legs, not long before the destruction of the Northern Kingdom by
the armies of the Syrian Empire. There’s a threat now coming from your friends,
the Northern Kingdom, and your enemies, the Syrians. They united against the
Southern Kingdom and as I pointed out in our study of Isaiah 7:14, the focal
point was to destroy the house of David.
They weren’t
destroying the house of David simply because they didn’t like David or they
didn’t like his descendants but because there was a spiritual dimension which
they may or may not have been aware of and this is part of the angelic
conflict, Satan’s attempt to destroy God’s plan for providing a Savior. The
promise of a Savior had come to David in what’s known as the Davidic covenant
in 2 Samuel 7:14. God promised David that he would provide a descendant who
would be eternal and that there would be an eternal dynasty and that a
descendant of David who was eternal, indicating deity, would sit on his throne
forever.
Now if this
unholy alliance between the Northern Kingdom of Israel and the Syrians was
effective then that would destroy that promise. It would render God’s ability
to fulfill the promise through a descendant of David null and void. That’s the
general attempt. Satan has had a number of these attempts, attacks on different
lineages in the Old Testament to try to block the coming of the Messiah. So
that’s the context. There’s prophecy in chapter 8, the prophecy, of course, of
Isaiah 7:14, is that God would give to the house of David a sign that the
virgin would conceive and call a son whose name would be Immanuel, meaning God
with us. This emphasizes that the child of the virgin would be God, would be
fully divine, as I pointed out in the previous lessons.
Then there’s
also a warning that this doesn’t mean that the house of David is going to
survive without conflict or without difficulty. There’s warning that a day is
going to come when God is going to raise up an empire that is going to destroy
the Northern Kingdom and threaten the Southern Kingdom and this is the threat of
the kingdom of Assyria, mentioned in Isaiah 7:18 and also mentioned in Isaiah
8. But there’s hope and the hope is that God has provided a future solution.
He’s not going to go back on His promise to the house of David and he’s going
to establish the kingdom. So we have this continuous prophecy.
If you just
look at Isaiah 8 briefly, starting in verse 5, we have another message from God
through Isaiah. “Inasmuch as these people have rejected the gently flowing
waters of Shiloah and rejoice in Rezin and the son of Remaliah.” Now who were
Rezin and Remaliah? The king of Syria is Rezin and Pekah the son of Remaliah is
the king of Israel. We studied that back in Isaiah 7:1. And so these are the
traitors who are rejoicing in the alliance with the Northern Kingdom to destroy
the house of David. Then the promise of God comes in verse 7, “Now therefore,
behold, the Lord is about to bring on them the strong and abundant waters of
the Euphrates, even the king of Assyria and all his glory.” So Assyria is
pictured as a river at flood stage that will rise up and destroy the Northern
kingdom. “And it will rise up over all its channels and go over all its banks.
Then it will sweep through Judah, it will overflow and pass through.”
Note that it
doesn’t destroy Judah. “It will reach even to the neck, and the spread of its
wings will fill the breadth of your land, O Immanuel.” Notice he doesn’t go
over the head. There’s that term again. Immanuel, meaning God with us. So the
one who owns the land is the one who is going to be born is called Immanuel.
This promise continues to be reiterated down through the rest of that chapter
that those who rest on the Lord will be delivered. So we come to look at this
context and we see that there’s a promise of severe judgment on the Northern
Kingdom and this is seen right before our context.
Remember there
weren’t chapters or verses divisions in the original text but at the end of
chapter 8 we read in verse 21, “They [Israel] will pass through the land
hard-pressed and famished…” In verse 19 it refers to demonism, “When they say
to you, consult the mediums and the spiritists who whisper and mutter, should
not a people consult their God?” That’s the rebuke that they should seek God
rather than mediums and wizards. “Should they seek the dead on behalf of the
living?” See they were going to all these other sources to find hope rather
than the Word of God. In verse 20 Isaiah says, “To the law and to the
testimony! If they do not speak according to the word, it is because they have
no dawn.” That is, the source of truth and the solution to problems is the Word
of God, Bible doctrine.
“Dawn” here
means light and it’s a key word we’re looking at here because there’s this
interplay in the text between light, which indicates the holiness and righteousness
of God, which illuminates the mind. “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a
light unto my path,” the psalmist says in Psalm 119. The Psalmist also says,
“In thy light we see light.” So it’s talking about the illumination of
Scripture. In the Northern Kingdom scripture was rejected so there’s no light
there, just darkness. When we get to verse 21 here it’s talking about this
judgment time of darkness that comes. They’ll be hungry as they pass through
this judgment because they have rejected the truth, “And it will turn out that
when they are hungry, they will be enraged and curse their king and their God
as they face upward.” They are going to curse God, curse their king as a result
of being unrighteous.
Romans 1:18 and
following says they’re suppressing the truth in unrighteousness. You know as
well as I do that when someone is doing something wrong and they’re dead set on
it and you tell them, in however nice a way you want to, that they need to
straighten up, they won’t like your correction and they turn and they’re
enraged at you. So this is what happens. God has brought discipline on them and
all that does is confirm them in their judgment and they turn around and they
shake their fist at God. What do they see? That’s verse 22, “Then they will
look to the earth and behold, the trees and darkness, the gloom of anguish, and
they will be driven away into darkness.”
See we have to
pay attention in this lesson to the interplay between light and darkness.
Darkness is the result of spiritual rejection of God and the truth. But there’s
a contrast when we get into chapter 9, verse 1, “[Nevertheless] But there will
be no more gloom for her who was in anguish, in earlier times. He treated the
land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali with contempt…” Now the land of
Zebulun and Naphtali is in the north of Israel. When you see these geographical
terms you take a look at where this is. Go to the back of your Bible. Look it
up on a map.
Connie’s on
vacation right now and there’s a couple of e-mails pending because she’s
traveling and one of them is that there’s a new app that you can download for
your iPad or iPhone called Biblemap app
(http://www.reclaimingthemind.org/blog/2013/07/introducing-the-biblemap-app-a-must-have-for-everyday-bible-study/).
Note: Android version coming in Fall 2013. You can download it and if you click
on a place name, it takes you directly to Google maps and your location by live
satellite and shows terrain features and everything. It’s a neat little thing
so you can figure out where these locations are. Zebulun and Naphtali are
territories given to those tribes and they’re in the north, in the area known
as “the Galilee”. This is the area where Jesus spent most of His ministry.
So what’s being
said here is that the gloom is going to diminish. “The gloom will not be upon
her [Israel] who was distressed as when at first he lightly esteemed Zebulun
and the land of Naphtali and later on [there’s a recognition that a light is
going to come into this land which has gone through this severe judgment]. The
Hebrew words that are used here indicate a state of darkness and severe
darkness and distress upon the land. It’s a sign of judgment. The words
correlate to each other. “And afterwards He shall make it glorious by the way
of the sea on the other side of Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles.” That
particular statement there is later picked up and referenced in the New
Testament in Matthews 4:16. “The people who walk in darkness will see a great
light” is applied by Matthew to the light that is seen when the Messiah comes
and proclaims the presence of the Kingdom of God in Matthew 4. This shows
revelation of the truth, God’s grace to the area of the Northern Kingdom which
is Galilee, and this is prophesied here.
Now in Isaiah
9:3 we read, “You shall multiply the nation. You shall increase their gladness.
They will be glad in Your presence as with the gladness of harvest.” Now this
jumps forward in time. That’s the trouble with reading some of these prophecies
in Isaiah and Ezekiel, they switch back and forth from the present time of
pronouncing judgment on the disobedient nation in the 7th or 8th
century B.C. and then it
jumps forward to the future blessed time of the Messianic Kingdom. And so verse
3 jumps forward, “You shall multiply the nation. You shall increase their
gladness. They will be glad in Your presence as with the gladness of harvest,
as men rejoice when they divide the spoil for you have broken the yoke of his
burden…” This is talking about when the Messiah comes and throws off the oppressors
of Israel and re-establishes the nation.
Verse 5 says,
“For every boot [sandal] of the booted warrior in the battle tumult, and cloak
rolled in blood will be for burning, fuel for the fire.” All of that refers to
when Jesus returns at the battle of Armageddon, destroys the enemies of Israel
and then establishes the kingdom. Now we see the foundational basis for that
which is in the Messianic prophecy of verse 6: “For a child will be born to us,
a son will be given to us.” This whole prophecy from verse one all the way down
to the end of this chapter into chapter 10, down to at least verse 24, is all
written in poetry in Hebrew. You have the same principles we studied in
Proverbs. You have parallelism to stress the different ideas. The first two lines
of verse 6 are given in synonymous parallelism. Child is parallel to son, born
is parallel to given. But there’s a difference. On the one hand there’s a child
that is born, indicating normal human birth process and then we have a parallel
but it’s contrastive and it’s actually antithetical even though it doesn’t say
‘but’ which you normally see but it’s not synonymous.
The ‘son’ is
the ‘child’ but the son is given. The term son is always a reference in
passages like this to the Son of God. So the Son of God isn’t born. He is
eternal. He’s given so we have the humanity and the deity of the Messiah both
mentioned here. This son that is given is going to be the Son of Man from
Daniel 7 who comes to rule the kingdoms with a rod of iron. That’s Psalm 2:7.
“The government will rest on His shoulders” indicating He will rule. Then there
are five titles that are given to Him. He’s called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty
God, Everlasting Father. There is a problem with that translation which I’ll
point out in a minute, Prince of Peace.
Then we’re told
that “There will be no end to the increase of His government or of peace.” He’s
going to sit on the throne of David. What was the issue back in Isaiah 7? It
was whether the throne of David was going to survive, was the house of David
going to survive? This is again reiterating the comfort of God’s promise that
in spite of the fact they’re going to come under this severe judgment they’re
going to have distress and darkness and anguish but the Messiah, the Son of
David, will come and He will establish peace and order and judgment and justice
forever. Not just for a couple of centuries. Not just for his lifetime but
forever.
Now there are
some problems here with the text. As I pointed out before, one of the problems
we have in the text we use for the Hebrew Bible is that it was edited by a
group of scribes over a period of centuries that standardized Hebrew language
and standardized the text. They’re called the Masoretes. But during that period
of time from roughly about A.D. 400 to A.D. 900 was also the rise and expansion
of Christianity so a lot of things the Masoretes did with the text were
designed to affect the text so it would not be Messianic. One of the things
they do here is they added certain accents in the Hebrew to break up the flow
of the text so it would not be translated as you see it in the New Kings James
version and most of the versions you’re familiar with.
We’ll take the
phrase “mighty God”. This child that was to be born was to be called “mighty
God.” That would seem to be a major problem. How can God, mighty God, be born?
So they wrestled with that. Next is “everlasting father”. Some people have
questioned that term “Father” and said he’s not the Father, he’s the Son. But
in Hebrew it’s ad
ab. Ab
at the beginning is the word for Father and ad is the term for eternity. It’s merely a
designation that this child who is born is eternal. He’s the father of
eternity. It’s an idiom for stating he is eternal without beginning or ending.
It should be translated “father of eternity” and “prince of peace”. But in the
Masoretic text it would read, “The wonderful counselor, the mighty God, calls
his name.”
Notice how it
shifts the meaning of the verb, the voice of the verb form will be called which
is passive to active. They really twist it up in order to get their
translation. “Calls his name Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.” So instead of
having one persona in the verse which is the child, the son, you now have two.
You have the child and now God calling Him something. There’s no warrant for
that. In fact, one of the better trained Hebrew scholars, Franz Delitzsch, who
co-authored a ten volume commentary on the Old Testament, usually referred to
as Keil and Delitzsch commentary, was from a Jewish background. I believe he
trained for the rabbinate and he says, “There are four basic problems with what
the Masaretic text does. First of all, contextually, it doesn’t make sense that
two sets of names would appear. Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God would be one
set. Eternal Father, Prince of Peace is another set. The first applying to God,
the second applying to the Son. The text does not indicate anything directed
toward God. The point of the text is the name of the child.” Second, he points
out, “there’s no reason to expect such a long roundabout name for God.” Third
he says, “A dual name construction as indicated by the accents has no precedent
in Isaiah. It doesn’t fit Isaiah’s style at all. It’s extremely unusual.” And
then fourth he says, “If it were to be indicating a difference between God and
human who is called Eternal Father, Prince of Peace, then a further distinction
would be made in the text to identify that and the first two titles would begin
with a definite article to indicate that those apply to God to distinguish them
from the second titles.” So it just doesn’t fit at all. The only reason you
would try to come up with that second translation is the way the Masoretes
inserted the accents.
If we go back
to Isaiah 9:6 and just look at these titles: Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace, we see that these are all terms that
reinforce the deity of this child that was born. He’s not just a human child.
The first name ‘wonderful’ is a Hebrew word pele. We use the word wonderful in English to
translate it often but it really means incomprehensible, beyond our
understanding, something that is beyond human capability, and something
extraordinary. This word pele is only used of God in the Old Testament. We use the word
wonderful to describe many different things. We say, “Oh, I’ve got a wonderful
wife. I’ve got a wonderful husband. I’ve got wonderful dogs.” But in the Bible
this word is only used of God. It’s never applied to human beings so this is
talking about a specific divine attribute that never crosses into the human
realm.
The term
counselor is again a term that relates to God. It means that He is the One that
is the source of advice and counsel and guidance. The next term mighty God is
also a name that relates to God. It is gibbor. This refers to God as a powerful
warrior. It is used many times in Scripture as in Isaiah 10:21. The third name
I’ve pointed out already is the Father of eternity and this is used in Isaiah
63:16. Then the last title Prince of Peace does not in and of itself emphasize
deity but it does when we understand the role of the Messiah in bringing peace
to God and man as the God-Man. That is His role. So this verse emphasizes both
the deity as well as the humanity of Christ.
So now we have
two passages early on in Isaiah given within the context of national
disintegration, indicating the promise of the faithfulness of God as the
solution to man’s problems because only God can solve man’s problems. Man can’t
solve his problems. He can’t solve them through education, through economics,
through politics or any of these other things. Only God can ultimately solve
the problem. The solution comes through Jesus Christ. He is the One alone
because He solves the basic problem, which is sin, and so only when He comes to
reign will He put an end to war.
Now that’s
important because if you’re looking at Isaiah 2:2, there is a well-known
prophecy related to the Millennial Kingdom. It reads, “Now it will come about
that in the last [latter] days…” I’ve taught this before. I want to remind you
that the term ‘latter days’ can apply to either the latter days of God’s plan
for Israel or God’s plan for the Church so we have to pay attention to the
context to see which latter days it is. People ask, “Are we in the last days?”
Well Paul referred to his time as the latter days of the Church so we have the
Church Age in and of itself always exhibits certain characteristics because
we’re living in the cosmic system. Then there’s the latter days of the time of
Israel and those latter days refer to what we also call Daniel’s seventieth
week, that last period that is sometimes referred to as the Tribulation.
Sometimes it
refers to the last days in Israel’s history which refers to the Messianic
Kingdom. In this verse the latter days is referring to the Millennial Kingdom,
“Now it will come about that in the last days the mountains of the house of the
Lord will be established as the chief of the mountains.” There’s going to be a
massive earthquake in Jerusalem at the end of the tribulation period during the
time of the battle of Armageddon and the whole temple mount area is going to
become elevated and enlarged and this will be the site of the temple that is
rebuilt during the Millennial Kingdom that is described in Ezekiel, chapter 40
and following.
Then we read,
“And will be raised above the hills and all the nations will stream to it.”
This is going to be the center of God’s worship in the Millennial Kingdom. “And
many people will come and say, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord…” There will
only be one. You’re not going to have worship centers all over the world.
You’re going to have one in Jerusalem. “…to the house of the God of Jacob that
He may teach us concerning His ways and that we may walk in His paths. For the
law will go forth from Zion and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. He shall
judge between the nations and will render decisions for many people and they
shall hammer their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning forks.
Nations shall not lift up sword against nation and never again will they learn
war.”
That is a verse
related only to the Messiah and the Messianic Kingdom as the time of peace,
because He’s the Prince of Peace. Now that was co-opted by the United Nations
back in 1945 and was chiseled into the wall over the entry way to the UN because they’re making a Messianic claim. The very
existence of that UN building is an
act of idolatry in opposition to God because they claim to do what only God can
do, that is to bring peace. They claim to be the Messiah. Now that’s just
totally false.
Now I want you
to turn over to Micah. Micah’s in that part of your Bible where the pages
aren’t discolored or turned because you really haven’t read much there. Micah
is what is known as one of the twelve because they’re minor prophets. They’re
minor not because they’re not significant; they’re minor because they’re
small. They’re short little books that you can read easily, one a night,
and in the next two weeks you can read all of the minor prophets. Micah is
writing at the same time as Isaiah. There are many things that are said by
Micah that are also said by Isaiah. They’re writing during the 8th
century, roughly in the 700’s just prior to the defeat of the Northern Kingdom
by Assyria. In fact, they both focus on warnings about what will happen to the
Northern Kingdom and also predictions of what will happen to the Southern
Kingdom by the king of Babylon. These are major themes in both books. Now if
you look at Micah, chapter 4, I just want to pick up a little context. We’re
actually going to be looking at Micah 5:2. This is our third verse from the Old
Testament. “But as for you, Bethlehem Ephratah, too little to be among the
clans of Judah. From you One will go forth for Me to be ruler in Israel. His
goings forth are from long ago, from the days of eternity.”
Now what’s the
context here? The context again comes out of a section that deals with the
future glories of Israel under the rule of the Messiah but also promise of
future judgment. God is going to bring judgment upon Israel and they’re to go
through a period of deep distress. We know from history that they were taken
out of the land under the fifth cycle of discipline again and that they are
going to eventually be returned. Now that hasn’t happened yet. I think we’re
seeing a partial restoration in fulfillment of Isaiah 11:11 right now.
This is the
initial regathering in unbelief. There are two worldwide re-gatherings. One in
unbelief and one in belief. The re-gathering that occurred in 538 B.C. in the Old Testament period was partial. There were
still more Jews living outside the land of Israel during the time of Jesus than
in the land. It wasn’t a full restoration. Most of them just returned from a few
countries. So there has never been a worldwide gathering. Isaiah 11:11 says
there will be two. It indicates a second time and the second time is when they
are in regeneration. So the first time is not going to be in regeneration.
That’s the implication.
The first time
is not specifically mentioned. It just says, “I will re-gather you a second
time.” Well, when’s the first time? I believe the only time in history that
marks that is right now when we’re very close. About 48 or 49% of Jews in the
world now live in the state of Israel. It won’t be long now before over 50%
live in the modern state of Israel. That’s not a sign of the time but it is an
indication that this is massive, a first of its kind since 722 B.C. when God has restored a vast number, almost half of
the Jews in the world to the historical land promised to Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob.
So let’s look
at Micah 4 to get the context. “Now it will come about in the last days [latter
days]…” What latter days? Latter days of Israel. This would be related to
either the tribulation period or the Millennial Messianic kingdom. “It will
come to pass in the last days that the mountain of the house of the Lord will
be established in the chief of the mountains.” Have you read that somewhere
before? Isn’t that amazing? Micah must have been reading Isaiah or they got it
from the same person. “It will be raised above the hills and the people
[Gentiles] will stream to it. Many nations will come and say, “Come let us go
up to the mountain of the Lord and to the house of the God of Jacob that He may
teach us His ways and that we may walk in His path. For from Zion will go forth
the law, even the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.” This is taken right out of
Isaiah, chapter 2.
Whenever God
repeats himself two or three times, you better pay attention because it’s
really important. Then verse 3 says, “And He will judge between many peoples
and render decisions for mighty, distant nations. They shall hammer their
swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nations will not
lift up sword against nation and never again will they train for war.” It’s
just the same statement that’s made in Isaiah 2. The Messiah brings that about.
So that’s our hope for the future world.
Verses 4 and 5
continue to emphasize that. How long does it last? “As for us we will walk in
the name of the Lord, our God forever and ever.” I want you to pay attention to
that clause because it’s the same verbiage we’re going to find later on.
Forever and ever means never ending. Sometimes olam can just mean for a long time but
when you have words compounded here in the Hebrew that means eternity. Verse 6
says, “In that day, declares the Lord, I will assemble the lame and gather the
outcasts. Even those whom I have afflicted. I will make the lame a remnant and
the outcasts a strong nation and the Lord will reign over them in Mount Zion
from now on and forever and you, tower of the flock, hill of the daughter of
Zion, to you it will come from the former dominion and will come the kingdom of
the daughter of Jerusalem.” All of this reaffirming that God is indeed
going to fulfill the promises to the house of David to re-establish the house
of Israel so no matter how dark things get, no matter how distressing things
get, God is still in control and He’s going to bring about His plan.
Now that
doesn’t mean we don’t go through some hard times. That doesn’t mean we don’t go
through a lot of personal adversity. It doesn’t mean we may not go under divine
judgment as a nation. Israel certainly did. Now verse 9, “Now why do you cry
out loudly? Is there no king among you?” They lacked a real leader; he was
apostate, “Agony has gripped you like a woman in childbirth.” Israel’s pain and
distress is being compared to that of a woman in labor. In verse 11 God says,
“Writhe and labor to give birth, daughter of Zion, like a woman in childbirth.
For now you will go out of the city, dwell in the field, and go to Babylon.” So
this is a prophecy that God’s going to take you through all this distress and
pain and misery and sorrow. You’re going to be taken out of the land and
removed to Babylon in captivity. This is the story of Daniel and his three
friends taken out of the land. “There you will be delivered. There the Lord
will redeem you from the land of your enemies.” This was his promise that they
would ultimately be restored from the hands of their enemies. Verse 11, “And
now many nations have been assembled against you who say let her be defiled and
let our eyes gloat over Zion but they do not know the thoughts of the Lord.” So
there are going to be many nations that are hostile to Israel. We’re shifting
here to a future forecast. See we’ve gone from future Millennial, then back to
the present that they’re going to be taken out in judgment, then back to the
future. So that’s where we go with the rest of chapter 4.
Then we come to
chapter 5 which talks about that judgment. “Now muster yourselves in troops,
daughter of troops because God has brought siege against us, with a rod they
will smite the judge of Israel on the cheek.” Now so far we’ve talked about
Jerusalem and the daughter of Zion which is another way of talking about
Jerusalem and the Israelites and now we’re going to shift to another city in
verse 2: “But as for you, Bethlehem, Ephratah…” Now Bethlehem was a small town
meaning the house of bread. The etymology of Ephratah indicate that which is
full but many people believe that it’s also an older name, a Canaanite name for
Bethlehem. By using both names it makes it very clear where we’re talking about
and it’s located just a few short miles south of Jerusalem. “But as for you,
Bethlehem Ephratah, too little to be among the clans of Judah, from you One
will go forth from Me to be ruler in Israel.”
There’s a
contrast between the word here that is used for “ruler” and the word “judge” in
verse 1. This term is mashal. It is emphasizing that it is a shift in terms of the
person. This is referring to the Messiah. It says, “His goings forth are from
long ago, from the days of eternity [everlasting].” Now in the Hebrew these are
two idioms joined together “from of old and from everlasting” it really refers
to eternity past. That tells us right here that this one who is going to come
forth from Bethlehem who is born in Bethlehem is also one who has come from
eternity. The two lines of the humanity and the deity of the Messiah come
together in this particular verse. He’s not only born in Bethlehem, just like
the child is born, but He’s also eternal. He’s the Eternal Son of God. His
goings forth are from everlasting.
So the three
Old Testament passages that you should control in order to say “okay I can show
you that the concept of the deity of Christ is not something just cooked up by
Paul in the New Testament. It’s in Isaiah 7:14, Isaiah 9:6, and Micah 5:2.” If
you’re taking notes in your Bible you can write in the margin two of those
references by each of those verses so anytime you go to Isaiah 7:15 right there
in your margin it says Isaiah 9:6 and Micah 5:2 and so on. Then if you happen
to have your Bible with you, you can find those verses. Hopefully you’ll learn
them and if you get a chance to talk to someone it will be out of your soul and
you’ll be able to share the gospel.
Here’s one
other passage from the Old Testament not as central as those other three but just
another one to re-emphasize the deity of the Messiah. In Jeremiah 23:5 and 6,
“Behold the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will raise up for
David’s righteous branch and He will reign as king and act wisely and do
justice and righteousness in the land. In His days Judah will be saved and
Israel will dwell securely. And this is His name by which He will be called,
The Lord our righteousness.” So he’s raised up from David but he is called
Yahweh,
our righteousness. In other words how do you explain that a descendant of David
is called by a personal name of God? This indicates He is full deity and is to
be identified with the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Jesus Christ isn’t
just a man. The New Testament is not unique in claiming that the Messiah of
Israel would be fully God and that is why we can rely upon our salvation and we
can understand eternal security.