So far in this blog series we’ve looked at key themes in the Old Testament which help us to understand what the gospel means. For Jews at the time of Jesus, we know that the gospel would have meant the following: 1) God would send them the Messiah, the king of Israel. The Messiah would come from “the house and line of David”; that is, he would be a descendant of David, Israel’s greatest king. 2) The Messiah would far surpass even David himself, leading Israel in righteousness and turning their hearts fully back to the Lord. Israel would at last be faithful to the covenant. 3) Israel’s covenant faithfulness would trigger the covenant blessings. No longer would faithless Israel suffer covenant curses and exile. 4) When God had set Israel right again, it would be time for the nations to share in the blessing. All people could look to Israel and say, “That’s what human life is supposed to look like!” 5) In this way, the image of God would be restored to all peoples. God’s original purposes would be achieved: image-bearing human beings would exercise his reign over the created order so that the world could flourish as God intended. 6) The kingdom of God would at last become a reality.
It is my contention that in order to fully understand the Bible, you must somehow hold this entire sequence of thought in your head at one time. The whole story goes together. It’s a story that would have been second nature to the Jews who studied and pondered the scriptures. Israel waited and wondered when their God would finally act in fulfillment of his promises. They passionately prayed that the time of fulfillment would soon arrive. So when one part of the story is mentioned, the writers of the Bible are counting on the fact that you know the other parts, too. Thus, when a passage of scripture declares that Jesus is the Messiah, the writer assumes you know that the Messiah is the great king who will set Israel right again, and will usher in the kingdom of God. And vice versa, when a Biblical passage talks about the kingdom of God, there is the assumption that the kingdom will come in the way God promised – through Israel and through Israel’s Messiah.
The best way to get this into your head is quite simply to commit yourself to reading the scriptures and knowing the story inside-and-out. Many Christians think of the Old Testament as a random collection of moral tales which basically form a long introduction to the appearance of Jesus. And the stories of the OT can function quite well as detached moral examples. For example, we can admire Abraham’s faith and seek to emulate his trust in God’s promises. But Abraham made some poor choices too (like lying about his wife) and that we should avoid. David was a man after God’s own heart, but there was that whole sordid affair with Uriah’s wife Bathsheba. Now I want to stress that there is nothing inherently wrong with reading the OT this way; you can still learn a lot about the character of God and what he desires for us. But if you really want to understand the Bible, you have to comprehend it as a single coherent story, with all these individual parts finding their place in the larger picture.
For the Bible reader who fails to grasp the scriptures as a single story, Jesus more or less pops up out of nowhere to save the day. Yes, they notice that Jesus happens to be Jewish, but he really could have come from any old place as long as he was the spotless lamb of God who died on the cross for our sins. This notion is completely misguided. The writers of the gospels tell the story of Jesus precisely as the climax to the larger story of God and Israel. It’s a story about creation and covenant, kings and Messiah, blessing and exile, Israel and the world. Within this all important story line, Jesus had to be Jewish. In fact, he had to be the king of the Jews, the Messiah. (Remember, the Messiah represents Israel, and Israel represents all nations before God. For Jesus to take upon himself the sin of Israel, and the sin of the whole world, he had to be the king of the Jews.) Jesus had to restore Israel to covenant faithfulness, because they were God’s chosen people, the people through whom God would bring blessing to the world.
In this light, let’s now take a look at the story of Jesus, with a particular emphasis on two themes: the kingdom of God and the Messiah. Virtually every scholar who has studied the life of Jesus, whether the most staunchly conservative or the most wildly liberal, agrees that the main theme of Jesus’ ministry was the kingdom of God. And for Jesus, this kingdom announcement constituted the good news. Mark describes the commencement of Jesus’ ministry in this way: “After John [the Baptist] was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. ‘The time has come,’ he said. ‘The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!” I certainly hope, dear reader, that you now have an excellent idea what this short declaration means! Jesus first century Jewish listeners would certainly have known: Jesus was claiming that the long-awaited time was arriving when God would establish his rule and reign over the whole earth. God would set all things right. Evil, injustice, and suffering would be replaced by righteousness, justice, and flourishing. Please, please, please, remember too that all the parts we mentioned above go together. If we’re talking about the kingdom, we can’t forget the Messiah, the great king who would establish the kingdom. Nor can we forget how this would happen: the Messiah would redeem Israel, leading her in righteousness so that she might receive God’s blessing and thereby serve as the channel by which God’s blessing would go out to all people.
There are lots of places when Jesus talks about the kingdom of God. It’s just as important to realize that there are often times when Jesus wasn’t explicitly talking about the kingdom, but demonstrating the arrival of the kingdom. Jesus is often recorded as casting out evil spirits. He healed people of all kinds of maladies: blindness, paralysis, deafness, and leprosy. On several occasions, Jesus even raises the dead to life. He demonstrates his sovereign power over the natural world by quieting the storm. He miraculously feeds thousands with only a few small fish and loaves of bread. In many of these events, Jesus doesn’t say anything directly about the kingdom. But he is revealing the kingdom with powerful actions. He’s showing that the arriving kingdom of God will mean that the forces of evil and darkness will be defeated. Suffering, pain, and illness will be no more. People will experience the life and joyful abundance that God always intended. This is the grand scope of the good news, that God is setting all things right again.
So the major theme of Jesus’ ministry was the good news that the kingdom of God was arriving. But, as we’ve studied, the kingdom of God cannot be separated from the theme of the coming Messiah. The Messiah would be the one who would usher in the kingdom. Again, it’s all one stream of thought. There are many, many passages in the gospels which focus on Jesus’ Messianic identity. For the sake of your attention span, dear reader, we’ll focus on two.
The first incident is given a prominent place by all the synoptic gospels. According to Mark 8:27-30, Jesus led his disciples to the region of Caesarea Philippi, some distance north of Galilee. There Jesus asks his disciples, “Who do people say I am?” They respond, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.” Jesus then puts the question directly to the disciples, “Who do you say I am?” Peter famously replies, “You are the Messiah.” Peter’s confession of Jesus as the Messiah is essentially the climax of Jesus’ Galilean ministry. It’s the most important piece of the gospel accounts until we reach the final, fateful week of Jesus’ life. Up until this point, Jesus has said and done a lot of powerful things. He’s announced the coming kingdom and talk of the Messiah is in the air. Jesus chooses this moment to make things crystal clear. He’s not just proclaiming the kingdom; he is the king.
The second scene we’ll look at is Jesus’ trial. Jesus initially faces the Jewish high priest and the Sanhedrin – the Jewish ruling council. Mark reports that many false witnesses brought various accusations against Jesus, but it seems they couldn’t pin him down. Finally, the high priest cuts right to the heart of the matter. He asks Jesus directly, “Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One?” (Remember, at this time, the “Son of God” was an alternative title for the Messiah.) Jesus answers, “I am, and you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven.” The first part of Jesus reply is quite straightforward; he indeed believes himself to be the Messiah. The second part is cryptic, but essentially Jesus is saying, “No matter what happens, I will be vindicated by God!” The high priest, of course, thinks that Jesus is a false Messiah, leading Israel astray, and therefore worthy of death.
The second stage of Jesus’ trial is before the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate. This is recorded in Mark chapter 15. Pilate begins by asking Jesus, “Are you the king of the Jews?“, to which Jesus replies, “Yes, it is as you say.” Pilate seems to sense that Jesus is no violent revolutionary threat; he offers to release him: “Do you want me to release to you the king of the Jews?” But the chief priests have incited the crowd against Jesus. They instead ask Pilate to release Barabbas, who ironically really was a violent, murdering revolutionary. Pilate then asks the crowd, “What shall I do, then, with the one you call the king of the Jews?” The bloodthirsty crowd responds, “Crucify him!” Wanting to satisfy the crowd, Pilate hands Jesus over to be executed. The Roman soldiers mock Jesus by dressing him in a royal purple robe, and place a crown of thorns upon his head. They taunt him by calling out, “Hail, king of the Jews!” Finally, Jesus is crucified, with his crime inscribed on the placard above him: “The king of the Jews.” As Jesus’ life slips away, the chief priests sneer, “Let this Messiah, this king of Israel, come down now from the cross, that we may see and believe.” All this takes place within a span of 32 verses! Mark could not have made the point more forcefully by hitting us over the head with a 2 x 4. The entire scene revolves around the question of Jesus’ claim to be the Messiah, “the king of the Jews.”
So, then, to summarize: we’ve seen how all the Old Testament gospel themes come rushing together in the life and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. The Messiah will redeem Israel, and bring blessing to the whole world. He will establish God’s kingdom. Therefore, it is thoroughly appropriate that Jesus’ announcement of God’s kingdom in word and deed forms the backbone of the gospel accounts. And Jesus is not just announcing the kingdom, he believes that he is God’s anointed king, the Messiah. Jesus’ Messianic claim is the vital issue that dominates the narrative of his trial and crucifixion. The gospel writers have made things perfectly clear. Jesus is the climax of the story; the moment Israel has been longing for for over a thousand years. May we see it that way as well.
