What 'Christ' Really Means: The Full Weight Behind the Name

Seated. Once again, it's a blessing and joy to be here with you all,

to be with Wilmington Reformed.

I'm so thankful that the Lord has brought you a pastor.

I'm really just thankful for myself, having gotten to know him a bit over a

couple meetings and coffee and speaking with him.

Pastor Jackson is just someone who is vigorously dedicated to the Word of God.

And it's just a blessing to have someone of that caliber whom the Lord is able

to use in this area and in this congregation.

So, so glad for the Lord and his plans and how he's worked that all out.

I'm very thankful that I'm still able to fill in now and then,

so that's a blessing as well.

And one of the things I'm excited to do today is to help give a concept that

I think is going to fit very well in your study of the book of Acts that you're

going through as a congregation.

Because today, what I'm going to preach about is what the Bible means when it

says that Jesus is the Christ.

We often hear the word Christ. We often see it written in scriptures.

Sometimes you don't notice it. They say Jesus or Jesus Christ.

Sometimes you don't notice it.

You're so used to seeing this word, but it's an incredibly theologically weighty

word. It may appear like a grain of sand on the paper, but there is an entire

dump truck load of meaning behind the word Christ.

It's a bit like a hyperlink on a Wikipedia page where there's a word colored

blue, and if you click that word, it opens you up to several other pages describing

that word. That's what the word Christ is like.

In fact, it's not an exaggeration to say that the entire gospel and all the

promises of God are bound together in that word Christ.

Like this gigantic upside down triangle, all the weight is on that one word, Christ.

And when biblical authors utilize that word, they understand what they're saying.

They know the weight they are bringing to bear as they state the Christ.

So my goal this morning is to help fill out your understanding of the word Christ,

maybe in some ways you haven't considered before.

And my prayer is that this understanding works to further enrich you in your

own personal scripture readings and then also as you go through the book of Acts.

So let me pray and then we'll get into it.

Heavenly Father, thank you for sending the Christ Jesus to suffer and die and

save and reign and bring justice and righteousness and to make all things new and right.

We thank you that we live in the midst of that marvelous story.

And again, that we are on the right side of that. We are your friends.

Bless now the preaching of your word and may what is spoken be received,

understood, and bear fruit. We pray in Jesus' name, amen.

So understanding that Jesus is the Christ from the Old Testament is remarkably

important to the Christian faith.

In fact, this was really the main objective of Jesus himself when he rose from the grave.

He wanted to teach those who were going to then go and spread the message of

the gospel to understand that the gospel was written there the whole time in

the Old Testament. He wanted to get this clear.

And it's the first message that Jesus spoke when raising from the grave.

I'll read to you here from Luke.

He says, Oh foolish ones and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken.

Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?

And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them and all

the scriptures the things concerning himself.

That was from Luke 24, 25, when Jesus is walking on the road to Emmaus,

he speaks with some disciples and reveals to them what's been going on in the

Old Testament the entire time.

Likewise, when Jesus appears to the apostles, those who are going to write scripture,

he tells them the same thing.

He wants to make sure they understand scripture before they go and write scripture.

So listen to what Jesus says in Luke 24, 45 to the apostles.

Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures and said to them,

thus it is written that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from

the dead and that repentance for forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in

his name to all the nations.

Now, once they understood this, once the apostles understood this,

guess what the first sermon that the church ever preached was?

I was preached at Pentecost in Acts 2. This is what Peter says.

Listen to this and how it's similar to what Jesus has been saying so far.

Brothers, I may say to you with confidence that the patriarch David,

that he both died and was buried and his tomb is with us to this day.

Being therefore a prophet and knowing God had sworn with an oath to him that

he would set one of his descendants on his throne, he foresaw and spoke of the

resurrection of Christ.

Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ,

This Jesus whom you crucified. This was the first message of Jesus when raising

from the grave, first thing he taught.

It was the first message of the early church, understanding from the Old Testament

that Jesus is the Christ.

And this goes on and on.

Helping people to understand from the Old Testament that Jesus is the Christ

is a major goal of throughout all of Acts, as you've probably seen somewhat

so far, and into the epistles.

I'm gonna read to you in rapid succession here, some examples.

So don't bother following along with these. This is just to give you an understanding,

a flavor of how often the apostles are teaching this message in the book of Acts.

So listen to these references here.

But what God foretold by the mouth of all the prophets that his Christ would

suffer, he thus fulfilled, repent therefore and turn back that your sins may

be blotted out, that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus.

That was from Acts 3, 18.

Again, and every day in the temple and from house to house, they did not cease

teaching and preaching that the Christ is Jesus.

That's what they're preaching. And that's from Acts 5, 4.

Again, but Saul increased all the more in strength and confounded the Jews who

lived in Damascus by proving that Jesus was the Christ.

Acts 9.22.

Acts 17.2 says this, And Paul went, as was his custom, and on three Sabbath

days, he reasoned with them, he reasoned with them, from the scriptures,

explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and rise from the dead.

This Jesus is saying, this Jesus whom I proclaim to you is the Christ.

Again, Acts 18, 28. This is Apollos, his ministry.

It says, he powerfully refuted the Jews in public, showing by the scriptures

that the Christ was Jesus.

Last one here, Acts 26, 22. This is when Paul is before King Agrippa.

He says, I stand here testifying to both small and great saying nothing,

but what the prophets and Moses said would come to pass that the Christ must

suffer and that by being the first to raise from the dead,

he would proclaim light to both our people and to the Gentiles.

And if you haven't heard all those passages condensed together,

you start to get this idea, wow, over and over the apologetic that the early

church was using, the way the gospel gained traction as they would point to the Old Testament,

they would show the Christ and they'd say,

Jesus is this one.

But notice in everything we just read, there's no definition for the Christ, right?

It's just assumed that the audience would know what Christ means.

Paul works to prove that Jesus is the Christ, but he didn't have to define what the Christ was.

Because again, his audiences were very, very familiar with their Old Testament,

probably more so than us. They were raised with it extensively.

So maybe we're not as familiar. And maybe some out there are thinking,

well, we get it. We just heard plenty of passages.

We understand that Jesus is the Christ. We know that.

We know that the apostles taught that, but you still haven't defined for us

what that word Christ means.

Just what is it that we're actually saying when we put together this sentence

that Jesus is the Christ? What does that mean?

So this is what we're going to do this morning. I want you all to picture in

your minds a box. This box is labeled Christ.

And then the definition of Christ is going to be the contents that we put inside that box.

I want that picture to be kind of reoccurring in your head.

And what we're going to do then is we're going to go throughout scripture and

find some clear scriptural meanings, some textual connections,

and put them inside this box that says Christ.

And this way, what we're going to do is develop a biblical understanding of

the definition for that word Christ.

And my hope is that by the end of this, we'll have that same box,

we'll open it up, and we'll have the same scriptures, labels,

categories, definition for that word Christ.

And now whenever we see that in the New Testament or in teaching,

we'll know exactly what the author means, what weight the author is bringing to bear.

I'll do this by giving us some nice, neat,

clean chain of textual connections that you'll be able to follow just like a

thread throughout scripture as we again populate the definition of this Christ

box that we're imagining together.

So to begin, if we open that up, I'm sure we all have the word Jesus in there,

right? Because we know that Jesus is the Christ.

That's there. And maybe you have this one too, but it's important to know

The word Christ simply means anointed So we need to take that idea of anointed

and put it in the box This is generally one who is anointed for special service

to the Lord Usually anointed as king We've heard the word christening before

A king is christened, declared to be king, anointed with oil.

That's literally what the word Christ means And the word Messiah is the same word,

Christ is the Greek version. Messiah is the Hebrew version. These both just mean anointed.

So you can put the word anointed into your mental box, Christ box here.

Next, and this will kind of be our mothership verse, if you will.

So if you'd like to turn, you can turn to Acts 13, 18.

I'll read from here, but I would ask that you remain there and don't try to

chase the references I'm going to give after this, because what will happen

is the point will be lost by the time you've got there and will be to the next verse.

So I do encourage you to write them down, because these are extremely valuable

verses to have on hand, to have memorized.

But I would say, I would recommend staying on Acts 3 and just allowing yourself

to listen to and record the references for the verses I'll be going for after that.

Let me read then for us Acts 3.18.

But what God foretold by the mouth of all the prophets that his Christ would

suffer, he thus fulfilled.

Repent therefore and turn back that your sins may be blotted out.

That he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus.

Then I'll jump to 24. And all the prophets who have spoken from Samuel and those

who came after him also proclaimed these days, you are the sons of the prophets,

and of the covenant that God made with your fathers, saying to Abraham,

and in your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed.

God, having raised up his servant, sent him to you first to bless you by turning

every one of you from your wickedness.

This is an extremely important passage.

It functions almost like a decoder ring for the Old Testament because what we

see here is that the categories of Christ.

Offspring and servant are all referencing the same person. They're all talking about Jesus.

Right here is a clear textual connection between the Christ,

the servant, and the offspring.

What is true of the Christ is true of the offspring raised up from Abraham to

bless the families of the earth.

And what is true of the offspring is also true of the servant.

The offspring here in this verse is called the servant of the Lord raised up by God.

What is true of one is true of each. This is great because these are Old Testament

terminology categories that we can find all throughout the Old Testament.

So what I want us to do then is in our Christ box, I want us to put the term

offspring in there and then the term servant in there because we know those

are biblically founded.

Always good to check your work. And so we can do that easily in Galatians 3.16.

It says this, Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring.

It does not say to his offsprings, referring to many, but referring to one,

to your offspring, who is Christ.

Okay, well, that doubly confirms for us that we should have in our mind this

Old Testament term, offspring, is referring to Jesus.

But now that we have that validation, this is where it gets very exciting.

Because as soon as we see that these terms, offspring and servant,

are messianic terms, are terms about Jesus,

Now we're kind of set off through this Bible-wide Easter egg hunt,

looking for these terms,

taking them within their context, and adding them to our Christ box that help

to fulfill in our minds what Scripture means when it says the term,

when it uses the word Christ.

So we're going to do that here. The first place I'm going to go is to Genesis 3.15.

The context here is mankind has just sinned against God. We're being kicked out of the garden.

We've essentially committed suicide through sin.

And God is now rebuking the serpent who tempted them. So it's a pretty low point here.

But there's a glimmer of hope because in the midst of God's rebuke of the serpent,

he says this, I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your offspring and her offspring.

He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel.

This is the very first declaration of the gospel of the Christ,

the offspring here. What do we learn?

We learn that he will be a human. He's going to come from Eve.

Now we know in hindsight, he's also God, but what's revealed here is that he'll

be a human coming from Eve. And what else?

He's going to bruise or crush the serpent's head.

That's pretty hopeful. But this picture fulfills more so.

This same promise is given to Abraham in Genesis 22, 18, passage we've already

heard quoted a couple times this morning. Let me read it for you.

God's speaking to Abraham here. And your offspring shall possess.

Well, this makes perfect sense as we put that in our box here,

right? Because Jesus certainly did crush the Satan's head.

And in Jesus, all the nations of the earth are blessed.

Galatians 3.8 restates that as well. The promise continues to be passed down to Isaac in Genesis 26.

In your offspring, all the nations of the earth shall be blessed.

And we see the same promise passed down again to Jacob in Genesis 28.14.

And in your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed.

And so you see then how this is a nice, neat chain, starting from Acts,

that term offspring, It led us back to Genesis 3.15. We put that in the box.

That leads us to Genesis 22, 26, 28. We can all put that in our Christ box because

they're all speaking of him.

In our box then, labeled Christ, we've added anointed, right, or Messiah.

We have servant of God, and then we have offspring.

But along with offspring came an entire range of promises we also had to pull in, right?

Because offspring is one who crushes Satan's head, And then he's also this one

who's gonna bless the nations. These all go together. They're all connected.

Now we're just gonna work that other angle about servant of God,

right? We've got some offspring filled up here.

Now we're gonna look at the servant of God and see how that term is prophetically

used throughout the Old Testament to understand and speak about the Christ.

Where we're gonna go here is to Isaiah, famous passage.

Many of you are familiar with this, probably all. 52 13

says this behold my servant

that's what we're looking for behold my servant shall act

wisely he shall be high and lifted up

and shall be exalted but later on in chapter 53 he says this of the servant

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,

So this servant raised up by God is apparently someone who's going to suffer

for the sins of his people.

There's more, though. If we went to Isaiah 42, 1 through 2, we see this.

Behold my servant whom I uphold, my chosen in whom my soul delights.

I have put my spirit on him.

He will bring forth justice to the nations. he will not grow faint or be discouraged

till he has established justice on earth.

Okay, we've got some things to add there. We learn something new about the Christ here, don't we?

Along with our servant definition, now comes, we follow that chain,

it now comes to show us that he's a suffering servant who dies for the sins of his people.

Also, we see that the servant is one who is filled with the Holy Spirit in an

especially powerful way such that he judges and brings justice upon the earth.

So those are all connected there. We're putting them in our box.

And here's the thing about how this works. The more verses we fill this box

with, the more Easter eggs, if you will, we have to look for because there are

further textual connections here.

Since we have a clear textual connection between Christ and servant,

and then from servant, this one who is spirit filled, it would make a lot of

sense, it would be very convenient if somewhere in the Old Testament,

we saw prophesied that this person who is spirit filled is referred to specifically

as the anointed one, the Christ.

But it would be great to see that. We have that exactly, actually, in Isaiah 61, one.

The spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me.

There's the Christ or Messiah word, because he has anointed me.

To bring good news to the poor, he has sent me to the blind and brokenhearted

to proclaim liberty to the captives.

Okay, right there we've got another connection. We see that the servant prophesied

to have the spirit of the Lord rest upon him is indeed the Christ,

the anointed ones, right there in black and white.

And in addition to blessing humanity, which we know he's going to do in defeating

Satan and taking the sins of his people, it says here he's going to set captives free.

Now we're quickly seeing, aren't we, just the richness and the complexity of

this word Christ as we keep all this stuff together in our minds.

That's why we have the box to put it in.

You put all these connections together, and this is an extremely tall order to fill.

Who could possibly do all these things?

And again, that's all we've done. We started in Acts 3, 24, and that led us to offspring,

which led us to understand that this is the one who is going to be the son of

Abraham and blesses the entire world and the one who defeats Satan,

that we followed our path from servant, that taught us that this is someone

who's going to suffer for sins and be anointed with the Spirit in an especially

powerful way such that he's going to bring justice to the world and set captives free.

But stick with me here, because there's a new batch of Easter eggs to follow

through scriptures here, stemming from the understanding that the Christ is

the servant who is especially filled with the Spirit.

Because that is another category that the Old Testament authors often reference.

We know that they're connected now.

So let me draw your attention to Isaiah 11, 1 through 4.

There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his

roots shall bear fruit, and the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him.

Okay, we know we're talking about the servant who is the Christ.

So now we know who we're talking about. Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him,

the spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the spirit of counsel and might,

the spirit of knowledge and fear of the Lord.

And his delight shall be in the fear of the Lord. He shall not judge by what

his eyes see or decide disputes by what his ears hear, but with righteousness, he shall judge the poor,

and decide with equity, the meat of the earth.

So what did we just see? What do we have here? Well, there's some terms we recognize,

right? We're familiar with. And then some ones that we don't recognize yet.

We clearly see this person who's anointed with the spirit of the Lord performing

a judging and ruling function, right?

Well, that fits really well with what we just read in Isaiah 61 and in Isaiah 42, 1 through 2.

We saw the servant was anointed with the spirit such that he would judge and

rule. So there's a nice textual connection there.

But what else is here? There's a new category, isn't there?

It seems like this verse is calling the spirit-filled Christ,

the servant of God, like it's calling him the shoot from the stump of Jesse.

Or referring to him as the branch. You see how those words have the same referent

here. We haven't heard of that yet. What's that all about?

Well, as many of you know, Jesse is the father of King David.

And the idea of the shoot coming from the stump of Jesse or the branch,

it's actually the same concept we use today for a family tree, right?

This servant filled with the Spirit is going to be someone who is of the family

tree of David, who is related to David.

So if we're making our connections right then, if we're following these verses

correctly, putting them together, It seems like the Christ,

the servant of God upon whom the spirit rests so he can judge the nations in

justice, that he's not only the offspring of Eve, Abraham,

and Isaac, and Jacob, but he's also going to come from the family tree of Jesse, David.

He's going to come from the tribe of Judah.

It sounds like this Christ is going to come from a royal line.

Of course, we know that is true.

And the gospel of Luke does a good job recording that. So what we're gonna do

now, it's in our box. We're gonna add branch.

That category is clearly to be put in the box here. Branch or shoot from the stump of Jesse.

Let's see then where that leads us throughout the Old Testament.

It leads us to Jeremiah 23, five. We're gonna hear this term used again. Listen to this.

Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord. when I will raise up for David

a righteous branch and he shall reign as king and deal wisely and shall execute

justice and righteousness in the land.

That fills the bill, doesn't it? That's exactly what we've been looking at.

The branch of David, who is the spirit-filled servant raised up by God,

they're filling the same roles here.

We know this is talking about the same person.

He's going to rule. He's going to reign, deal wisely, execute justice, and righteousness.

So if maybe it was kind of hinted at before, it's shouted now.

It's clear this Christ is most definitely going to be a king. He's going to rule.

He's going to be a king coming from David, who rules in justice.

He's going to be a king filled with the spirit. He's going to be a king who

is the offspring of Abraham, who blesses all the families of the earth.

And yet, don't forget, he's going to be a king who is also a servant,

rejected by his people, and suffers for their sins.

And it's amazing, isn't it? How Jesus really is the only person,

the only person who could ever fulfill these qualifications.

And again, this is how the apostles preached the gospel early on.

This is how they did their reasoning.

They proved, they reasoned, they explained from the Old Testament that Jesus

was this Christ. So we're going through some of the same verses that they would have back then.

But I've saved some of the best for last here because these are just amazing

when you see the connections here.

This is from 2 Samuel 7, 12.

This is when God is speaking to David and blessing him.

God says this to David, I will raise up your offspring after you.

Who shall come from your body, 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 to him a father, and he shall be to me a son.

So what did we have there? We

have this person coming from David is going to be called the son of God.

He's going to be a king coming from David, and he's going to reign forever.

Now listen to this, and this is the part that blows my mind every time I read it.

Listen to what the angel Gabriel says to Mary when at long last,

this Christ is about to be conceived in her womb.

This is what the angel says to Mary.

He will be called Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the

throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever.

Of his kingdom there will be no end.

Now, I don't have a reference written down for that. I believe that's chapter

1, verse 32, or somewhere close, but that's one you definitely want to mark.

Because what we have there, this is the exact same promise given to David back

in 2 Samuel 7. It's almost exactly restated to Mary as she's about to conceive the Christ.

It is the son of God. It is the son of David and the one who reigns forever.

So those two promises align perfectly.

Given to Mary, given to David.

And then arguably even more shocking than this, guess what are the second to

last words of Jesus himself in the scriptures?

Way at the end of the book of Revelation, which has just explained and showed

how Jesus really is now ruling and reigning in justice over the entire universe.

How he has vanquished Satan, throwing him into hell for eternity.

When Jesus is sitting on his throne in the new heaven and the new earth,

that vision we get into the future when all things are made new.

This is what Jesus says with his own words in Revelation 22,

16. I am the root and descendant of David the bright and morning star.

Jesus' second to last words in the scripture are a definitive and authoritative claim to him being,

the Christ, the one about whom all these prophecies point, the anointed king

coming from David, who has finally brought complete justice and righteousness to all the universe,

just as it was prophesied that he would.

How amazing then, that the whole Bible, from

Genesis 3.15 to Revelation 22

16 explicitly bear witness

to Jesus being the Christ showing

us how this works and who the Christ

is and we've arrived here this morning

without without twisting or without inferring simply by following overlapping

textual connections that's why I love the idea of the chain because if this

verse is true this one must be true if that verse is true this one must be true

and you follow that chain and it's amazing where it leads throughout scripture.

Again, we wanna put those in

our Christ box. We have that weighty understanding of what the word means.

Christ, Jesus, he is the offspring of Eve, Abraham, Isaac,

Jacob, David, who destroys Satan, who is full of the Spirit,

who blesses the nations and sets captives free from their sins by being the

suffering servant for them, and who eternally reigns over the entire universe

in peace and justice and in righteousness.

That is what Christ means.

And the New Testament authors know that. That's why their main goal is to get

people to see, no, Jesus is the one who does this.

He's the son of God. He's the one who does this.

And so whenever you see that word then, Christ and Matthew, Mark,

Luke, or any of the New Testament writers,

I want this sort of thinking to flood back into your mind, to understand all

of redemptive history and all of God's plans of the gospel is concentrated,

summed up, distilled in this one word, Christ.

We'll never skip over it again. We'll pause and remember what's being brought to bear.

So now then, our Christ box, though by no means full, has some good categories

put in there, hopefully more full than when the service began.

And I've only followed some of the main connections here. Only ones with overlapping language.

I haven't even touched on overlapping thematic references to Christ in Scripture

or the allusions to Christ in Scripture or the types of Christ in the Old Testament.

There are so many of these, and that's one of the joys of reading through Scripture,

seeing all the ways it is constantly referring to Jesus.

So my hope then through this is that as you enter back into the book of Acts

or back into your own scripture reading,

that the Lord would continually bring to mind an awe and a reverence and a mature

understanding every time you see that word Christ.

Just be able to thank him and thank him for who he is and how he has orchestrated

all this together for his glory.

Let me pray for us in closing. God, thank you for sending to us the Christ,

who sets us free, who crushes Satan, forgives us for our sins,

who will be reigning as the righteous king on the throne of David for all eternity. Thank you.

Thank you that we are saved by him,

saved by his blood, that we are in a relationship with you by his merit.

Thank you, God. Let us be people who understand this, who walk in this gospel

truth and who lives lives reflecting the fact that this is true.

We pray in Jesus' name, amen.