Hillary Mushambi_What are we waiting for?

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description. Now let's dive into today's

message. Something big is coming, but

here is my big question for everyone.

What are we waiting for? For Jesus to come back.

OK, any other answers? What are we waiting for when

we're counting down the day to Christmas for the day that Jesus

was born? I can see people have been

teaching their children the Bible.

Anyone else waiting for something different?

Food Time with family presents? Yes.

OK, you see, if we are quite honest, some of us might be

waiting for the Christmas presents and some of us might be

waiting for the food and the party and the time with family

and friends that we don't see all the time.

But at the end of the day, the whole point of this time leading

up to Christmas is to remind us that we are waiting for a

person. We are waiting for Jesus because

that's what Christmas is all about.

And Advent remembers that when Jesus came, he was someone that

God's people had been waiting for for a very long time.

But when Jesus first came into the world as a baby, how did

they know that he was the one they were waiting for?

I mean, I'm sure many babies were born around that time.

And how did they know that he was the 1:00?

We'd be throwing parties for thousands of years in the

future. Well, the Bible does have some

answers for us. And I want to look at what it

what some of those answers are by looking at three things they

were waiting for. The Bible tells us a lot in the

Old Testament about this person that was going to come.

And I want to look at three of those things about that they

said about him. For one, they were waiting for a

Messiah. Another, they were waiting for a

Saviour. And finally, they were waiting

for God. So waiting for a Messiah.

If you asked a Jew around the time that Jesus was born what

they were waiting for, the likely answer would be we're

waiting for the Messiah. Messiah right now.

That's a funny word, and if you don't know what it means, it can

sound a little strange, a little confusing.

What is a Messiah? Well, technically Messiah means

Anointed 1, which is referring to a practice where when God set

someone aside for a special job, he would have a profit go and

pour oil on their head as a sign that he was chosen by God for

this job. Now one of the common ways

anointing was used was to show who's going to be the next king.

And so over time, Messiah began to be a word associated with the

king that Israel was waiting for.

But Israel had had many kings, and if you read your Old

Testament, you'll see the prophecies begin to build up a

picture of a very specific kind of king, and often a king that

wasn't seen in the kings of the past.

There were always shortfalls, things that didn't measure up.

So now I'm going to just read 11 chapter from one passage from

Isaiah as an example. By the way, I love the book of

Isaiah. You'll see it come up a lot.

I've seen it described as the Gospel of the Old Testament

because it is just so rich with with Jesus in it.

So I'm going to read from Chapter 11 starting at verse

one. Out of the stump of David's

family will grow a shoot. Yes, a new branch bearing fruit

from the old root. There's clue number one about

the identity of this Messiah. He has to come from the family

line of King David and the stump is cut off When when Israel was

exiled, it looked like the tree was gone.

But someone was going to come from that line.

And the Spirit of the Lord will rest on him, the spirit of

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

spirit of knowledge and fear of the Lord.

He will delight in obeying the Lord.

He will not judge by appearance nor make decisions based on

hearsay. He will give justice to the poor

and make fair decisions for the exploited.

So here we're seeing a picture of a king who is a good king.

He's a fair king. I know every small child knows

the meaning of the word fair because you'll be so quick to

say that's not fair. And this king would be a wise

king, the kind of king who is compassionate to the poor and

the weak and those who are oppressed by the powerful.

The earth will shake at the force of his word, and one

breath from his mouth will destroy the wicked.

Now destroy sounds a little bit more intense than just punish

some of the wicked. Make sure a few of them get

what's coming to them. It almost sounds like the wicked

are going to be completely dealt with, like there will be no more

problem of the wicked. He will wear righteousness like

a belt, and truth like an undergarment.

In that day the wolf and the lamb will lie down, will live

together. The leopard will lie down with

the baby goat. The calf and the yearling will

be safe with the lion, and a little child will lead them all.

The cow will graze near the bear.

The cub and the calf will lie down together.

The lion will eat hay like a cow.

The baby will play safely near the whole of a cobra.

Yes, a little child will put his hand in the nest of deadly

snakes without harm. Nothing will hurt or destroy in

my holy mountain for us. The waters fill the sea, so the

earth will be full of the knowledge, full with people who

know the Lord. Now, whether this is simply

metaphoric language for the peace and safety that people

will experience under his reign, or whether this is something

that's still to come, that's a pretty impressive picture of

peace, isn't it? There's no danger to worry about

when this king is ruling. And in that day, the heir to

David's throne will be a banner of salvation to all the world,

and the nations will rally to him, and the land where he lives

will be a glorious place. And in that day, the Lord will

reach out his hand a second time to bring back the remnant of his

people, those who remain in Assyria and northern Egypt and

southern Egypt, Ethiopia and Elam, in Babylonia, Hamas and

all the distant coastlines. That's just a bunch of places on

the map. You can look them up if you're

interested. He will raise a flag among the

nation, the the nations, and assemble all the Exiles of

Israel. He will gather the scattered

people of Judah from the ends of the earth.

So finally, in this passage, we see that he will gather up his

people, Israel, who was scattered, right?

They've been sent everywhere away from their homeland, and

he's going to bring them back to himself.

So you can kind of see why at this point in Israel's history,

they're living under Roman rule. They are not free.

It's easy to see why the Jews would be waiting for a Messiah

who would be a leader who would free them from their oppressive

Roman occupiers and bring the Jewish people back to their

land. The problem is there were many

people around that time who either claimed to be the Messiah

or people thought they were the Messiah, which is what would

help them to rally the people around them to try and overthrow

the Roman rule. Now the Bible mentions a few of

them. In Acts chapter 5 and Acts

Acts 5 · chapter mention Acts 21 · chapter mention

chapter 21 we hear about these other Messiah figures.

Thudus managed to rally 400 men before he was killed and his

people dispersed. Then came Judah or Judas the

Galilean, who is the one credited with starting the

Zealots. You would have heard of them in

the New Testament too. And he led a bunch of people in

revolt before he was killed and his followers were scattered.

Judah also got a mention outside of the Bible.

Josephus, a historian of that time, also wrote about him and

described it as one who considered it shameful for the

Jews to agree to pay tribute to Roman rulers, and shameful for

them to tolerate a human master when they've got God as their

king. He also apparently had a prophet

who would go ahead of him the same way that Elijah was meant

to prophecy and warned that the coming of the Lord, the Messiah,

was going to come. And in Acts 21 we see another

example. The soldiers were confusing Paul

with an Egyptian Jew who had stirred up a revolt and LED 4000

terrorists into the wilderness. Right.

In fact, there were so many potential messiahs that Josephus

almost describes this period as some sort of Messiah fever,

right? If it was social media, it would

have been in the headlines all the time, right?

There's another Messiah. In fact, he writes the following

after Herod's death in book 17, chapter 10 of his histories.

Now at this time there were 10,000 other disorders in the in

Judea which were like tumults because of a great number put

themselves into warlike posture. OK, bit of a funny Latin hard

language. So let me put it into plain

language. He seems to see it as 10,000.

That's not a small #10,000 other problems happening in this place

in Judea. And they're like uproars or

riots. They're not small problems.

There's not someone in the marketplace having a fight,

right? And the reason is people were

setting themselves up as enemies of Rome.

That means people from the Jewish people were standing up

and trying to fight back. And then he goes on to to give

examples, many examples of Judeans rallying troops, burning

things, riots and so on. And then of course, the Romans

come in and the histories that he writes, they come in and save

the day. He he paints them as the heroes

who are squashing time and again, these uprisings of the

Jewish people. He doesn't explicitly use the

word Messiah, but given the context, it's very likely that

this is what rallied the people around those those charismatic

leaders that they hoped would liberate them from Rome.

And when you understand this context, it seems a little less

outrageous to consider Herod's reaction to the news that, Oh

no, there's another Messiah being spotted in Judea, right?

It also helps explain why 30 years down the line when Jesus

is teaching, they were more interested.

The leaders of the people of Israel were more interested in

keeping the peace than in going deeper into his claims that he

was the one God sent, because likely they had heard it all

many many times before and it had got them nothing but

trouble. So how would they have known

that Jesus was the real deal? Well, the answer is, as the kids

had started pointing out, the fulfilment of prophecy and there

were many prophecies about the Messiah to to fulfil, ranging

from where and how and when he would be born and where he would

live and what he would do. That's why the little details

mattered, like the fact that Jesus was born in a town called

Bethlehem. That's why it mattered that he

was from the town of David, the line of David.

That's why it mattered that he was born of a virgin and that

there was going to be a massacre of the scale of that would leave

the women and children, the women of Israel, weeping for

their children. It mattered that he spent time

in Egypt and that he was identified with Galilee where he

started his ministry, that he would live in the time before

the temple was destroyed, that he would die and rise again,

because these things were the things that the prophets had

said would be true of God's special king.

And as he fulfilled more and more of the things that he

prophesied hundreds of years before, it became clearer that

this man was the one that they had been waiting for.

He was the one that was promised by God.

But you see, there was something about this person that God had

promised that many in Israel missed.

They were waiting for a conqueror, a warrior who would

lead them to freedom from their enemies, a king who would

establish the Kingdom of Israel again.

But when God's anointed king arrived, he came with a very

different mission. You see, while the Old Testament

scriptures do seem to give the bulk of the prophecies to the

Jewish people in particular, there is enough in there to

suggest that His plan was always bigger than Israel alone.

And while the oppression of Israel under other nations was a

very real problem that God's people were waiting and praying

to be delivered from, the story of the Bible points to an even

bigger problem that God was working on solving right in the

beginning of the story of history.

In Genesis 315 we see the first of the Messianic prophecies when

God curses the serpent who tempted Eve to disobey him and

commit the first sin. He says to the serpent, I will

cause hostility. I will cause fighting between

you and the woman and between your offspring and her

offspring. He will strike your head and you

will strike his heel. Now there's a lot more going on

here than an origin story for the deep distrust and fear that

many of us feel towards creatures of the snake variety.

This is a promise that the enemy of God and of mankind will

ultimately be crushed by a descendant of the woman, but not

before he is first struck by the enemy.

You see, from the very beginning of God's story, it's been a

story about how our holy God has been working to restore

relationship between Himself and the people He made who was

separated from Him because of their sin.

Our biggest problem has never been any of the many variations

of damaged relationships between US and other people that we

experience. Though that's not to say that

the harm we cause each other is in any way right or not a

problem, but that's not our biggest problem.

The thing that God has been working to fix all along was the

sin that broke the relationship between US and our loving

Creator. And this is ultimately what he

came to resolve that one Passover when he was hung on the

cross at Calvary. And there the punishment that we

deserved for our sins was paid in full by the sacrifice of the

one perfect man who had never once sinned.

Now let me back up a little bit here.

If you thinking, hold on, this doesn't line up with the picture

of the liberating king who will bring his people back from

exile, don't worry, you're not alone.

Many of God's people were confused by that turn of events.

If Jesus really was their Messiah, who they believed would

free them from Roman rule, how could he die like that, hanging

on a cross? Many of God's people in Israel

didn't recognize their Messiah because they couldn't understand

how those different ideas fit together.

But they had forgotten that this was also part of God's plan from

the very beginning and that God had left them clues in the

Scriptures. When John the Baptist first saw

Jesus coming towards him as he was baptizing, he prophetically

announced, Look the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the

world. Not only was Jesus death

foreshadowed in the picture God had given of the Passover lamb,

but His reason for dying that Passover week was also predicted

in another one of Isaiah's prophecies.

Let me read from Isaiah 53. I'm going to start at verse 3.

For the sake of time, I'm cutting where I can.

This is describing the servant of the Lord.

But if you want the full picture, start at chapter 52,

just the last few verses. It's really amazing.

Now I'm not going to give commentary along the way.

Let it soak in and let God remind you what this is saying.

He was despised and rejected, a man of sorrows acquainted with

deepest grief. We turned our backs on Him and

looked the other way. He was despised, and we did not

care. Yet it was our weaknesses that

He carried. It was our sorrows that weighed

Him down, and we thought his troubles were a punishment from

God, a punishment for His own sins.

But He was pierced for our rebellion, crushed for our sins.

He was beaten so that we could be whole.

He was whipped so that we could be free, be healed.

And all of us, like sheep, have strayed away.

We have left God's paths to follow our own.

Yet the Lord laid on him the sins of us all.

He was oppressed and treated harshly, yet He never said a

word. He was like a lamb led to the

slaughter, and as a sheep is silent before her shearers.

He did not open his mouth. Unjustly condemned, he was led

away. No one cared that he died

without descendants, that his life was cut short in midstream,

but he was struck down for the rebellion of my people.

He had done no wrong and had never deceived anyone, but he

was buried like a criminal. He was put in a rich man's

grave, but it was the Lord's good plan to crush him and cause

him grief. And if you haven't caught it

yet, here has where you need to pay attention yet.

When his life is made an offering for sin, there's the

reason he came. He will have many descendants.

He will enjoy a long life, and the Lord's good plan will

prosper in His hands. When he sees all that is

accomplished by his anguish, he'll be satisfied.

And because of his experience, my righteous servant will make

it possible for many to be counted righteous, for he will

bear their sins. I will give him the honors of a

victorious soldier. Because he exposed himself to

death, He was counted among rebels, and he bore the sins of

many and interceded for the rebels.

The Messiah that Israel had been waiting for was more than just a

king who would liberate his people from one oppressive ruler

in one lifetime, because there's always the next.

The promised chosen king that God sent that first Christmas

was the sinless one who would suffer and die for our sins so

that we could be made right with God.

And as this prophecy also foreshadows, he would not stay

dead otherwise. It's contradicting,

contradicting itself. He would have no descendants,

but he'll have many descendants. He will die, He will come back,

and then he will have many children.

He would be raised from the dead and live forever ruling over

God's people. So they were waiting for a

Messiah. They were waiting for a Saviour.

Well, if the Israelites had missed something so big about

this person they were waiting for, is it possible there is

something else they might have missed?

Well yes, it was something else that took even Jesus closest

disciples a while to figure out. See, the promised king and

promised Saviour was more than just a man.

He was also God in the flesh. We see this hinted already in

Chapter 9 of Isaiah. For the sake of time, I'm just

going to read a few verses. Verses 2 and three and then six

and seven. The people who walk in darkness

will see a great light. For those who live in the land

of deep darkness, a light will shine, you will enlarge the

nation of Israel and it's people will rejoice.

They will rejoice before you as people rejoice at harvest and

like warriors dividing plunder. For to us a child is born, a son

is given to us. The government will rest on his

shoulders and he will be called wonderful Counsellor, mighty

God, everlasting Father, and Prince of Peace.

His government and its peace will never end.

He will rule with fairness and justice from the throne of his

ancestor David for all eternity. The passionate commitment of the

Lord of Heaven's armies will make this happen.

That was all 700 years before Jesus.

Now the disciple John recognized this truth about Jesus when he

introduced his Gospel in this way.

In John one we read in the beginning, the Word already

existed. The Word was with God, and the

Word was God. He existed in the beginning with

God, and God created everything through him.

Nothing was created except through Him.

The Word gave life to everything that was created, and His life

brought light to everyone. The light shines in the

darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it.

God sent a man, John the Baptist, to tell about the light

so that everyone might believe his testimony.

John himself was not the light. He was simply a witness to tell

about the light. The one who is the true light,

who gives light to everyone, was coming into the world.

He came into the world he created, but the world didn't

recognize him. He came to his own people and

even they rejected him. But to all who believed Him and

accepted him, He gave the right to become children of God,

reborn, not with a physical birth resulting from human

passion or plan, but a birth that comes from God.

So the Word became human and made His home among us.

He was full of unfailing love and faithfulness, and we've seen

His glory, the glory of the Father's one and only Son.

Now it's clear, the way John writes in his chapter and the

rest of his gospel, that Jesus is more than just a man sent by

God. Jesus is God taking on flesh in

order to bring his own rescue plan to fulfilment.

And John isn't the only New Testament writer to recognize

who Jesus is, though maybe he's the most obvious of them.

Other writers, like Paul and Peter and the author of Hebrews

all come to the same conclusion. The letter to the Hebrews goes

so far as describing Jesus as the exact representation of

God's being. In other words, if you've seen

Jesus, you have seen God. The message of Christmas is not

just one of God sending a special prophet to do his

bidding. It is a story of God himself

coming down and walking among us, living among us, God himself

coming to rescue his people, to restore the relationship between

him and himself and us. This is why Jesus is also called

Emmanuel, which means God with us.

So to wrap this up, when Jesus came into the world born as a

helpless baby to live a perfect and sinless life, he came as the

King that was promised long ago. He came also as a Saviour who

would deal with our biggest problem, our sin that separates

us from knowing God. And he came as God walking among

us, making himself known to us so that we could understand just

how much he loves us. But many of God's people still

missed Him when he came. They didn't recognize Him, even

though had they had waited for such a very, very long time for

his coming. Many didn't recognize Him even

as he walked around among them and taught them about why he

came. So I want to turn to us today

with all the evidence that the Bible presents.

And I want to ask you, what will you do with the Messiah that

God's people had waited so long for?

Will you recognize him and learn from him and trust him and

follow him as King and Saviour and God?

Or will you, like so many others in Jesus day, who saw God

Himself, miss the one that history itself was waiting for,

that was promised from the very beginning?

I want to urge you not to be like those who reject Him, but

instead choose to trust Him and to celebrate Him who invites us

to become children of God. Even for those of us who already

follow Him, let's not miss Him in our Christmas celebrations.

Let's not let it be all about the presence and the party and

the food. This is a time for remembering

and great rejoicing that He came and waiting for Him to come

again. Let us pray.

Father God, thank you for your wonderful plan to save us and to

restore our relationship with you through sending Jesus

Christ. Thank you that at Christmas we

get to remember how wonderful your plans are and how faithful

you are in fulfilling all that You promised.

Help us to keep keep trusting You as we continue to wait for

Jesus to come back again and to keep praising You as we

celebrate another beautiful Christmas in Jesus name, Amen.

Thank you for listening to today's message.

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