The King Long-Awaited Series

Today we’re starting our Christmas series of talks. I’ve given the series the title ‘NOT YOUR USUAL KING’.

After Jesus was born, magi – astrologers – came from the east to Jerusalem and asked, ‘Where is he who has been born KING OF THE JEWS?’ [Matthew 2:2]. After the magi found Jesus, ‘they fell down and worshipped him’ [Matthew 2:8]. This is a big hint that Jesus is not your usual king! These magi came so far to find Jesus – a young child – and then fell down and worshipped him? Surely, they wouldn’t have done that for any ordinary king.

As we shall see, Jesus is NOT your usual king. What king is announced by a star? What king is born in a stable? What king is God?! What king will come again? Jesus is certainly not your usual king.

But today we’re looking at another way that Jesus is not your usual king. No king was as long-awaited as Jesus.

Most of us know that the Old Testament contains lots of prophecies about Jesus. Some of the oldest prophecies go back to Genesis and some people would even say that the first prophecy of all comes from something God said to the serpent in the Garden of Eden. God told the serpent – Satan – that the woman’s seed would crush his head. Some people take ‘the woman’s seed’ to mean Jesus. I don’t know if that really is a prophecy about Jesus. If it is, it goes back perhaps 8 or 10,000 years. But even if that isn’t a prophecy about Jesus, there are certainly others which go back almost 2,000 years before Jesus. How about this one, also in Genesis:

“The sceptre shall not depart from Judah,

nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet,

until tribute comes to him;

and to him shall be the obedience of the peoples.”

We might think that Old Testament prophecies aren’t all that important to us. But actually these ancient prophesies are still important to us today. That might be a bit difficult for us to get our heads around.

We probably get it that prophecy is useful BEFORE an event.

Let me give you an example. Your grown-up children telephone a few days beforehand to let you know they’re coming. So you spruce the house up; make a cake. I’m not quite sure if this example works the other way round. If you are visiting your grown-up children, do they spruce the house up and make a cake? You can tell me your experience of that afterwards…

The point is, advance warning is helpful. You know who or what is coming. You get ready. Prophecy works the same way. God sends a message via a prophet that he’s going to do something. People get ready. In various ways, God told his prophets that that he would send his son into the world. To some extent, it was in order that people should get ready.

And when Jesus came, people WERE expecting a messiah. We can see that in the New Testament. King Herod heard that the magi were looking for a king of the Jews and he asked the religious leaders where the Christ would be born. The Samaritan woman who Jesus met by a well said she knew Messiah was coming. Martha, Lazarus’s sister, said she believed Jesus was the messiah. So, when Jesus came, people were expecting a messiah. But they didn’t know who the messiah was.

So prophecy is useful BEFORE an event. But it was often AFTER the event that the prophecy was most useful.

Quite often, Jesus’ disciples noticed AFTER Jesus did something that it fulfilled prophecy. The prophecy then gave them confidence that Jesus was the person they thought he was.

Although we live 2000 years after Jesus’ disciples, we’re in a very similar situation to them. Just like them, we can see AFTER the event that some part of Jesus’ life fulfilled prophecy. That fulfilled prophecy then gives us confidence that Jesus is the person we believe he is.

Let me try a little illustration out on you.

In August 2016 the company I worked for sent me to attend the opening of a new building for a Christian youth organization called Youthscape. The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge attended the opening.

Let’s imagine that 30 years from now I’m conscious that my memory isn’t what it was. I wonder to myself, did the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge really attend that opening? So I go to the archive of Her Majesty’s Lord-Lieutenant of Bedfordshire. I know that the Lord-Lieutenant would have been involved in planning the royal visit. If I didn’t find some correspondence in the archive about the royal visit, I would be very suspicious. But I find lots of letters and emails about it. They show me the when, where and who of the Cambridges’ visit. I’m sure that the letters are genuine and date from before the visit and they correspond with what I remember. Now I’m confident that the Cambridges really visited.