Not My Messiah

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
    because He has anointed me
    to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
    and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
  to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Luke 4:18-19

The Jews in the Bible had their own idea of what the Messiah would be like and what he would do. They expected a descendant of David to come and rule over Israel forever (Psalm 89:4). In the first century, the Jewish community was living under an extremely corrupt government system. They expected a Messiah to overthrow the oppressive Roman empire and take back the throne of David by force. They undoubtedly assumed this would be accomplished through brute strength, and a physical military victory. Their hope was that he would redeem them and reestablish peace to their nation.

This type of victory did not come from Jesus. He did not start wars, did not encourage His followers to commit violent acts against Roman officials, and He did not overthrow the throne. How then could this man be the Messiah? He came, He saw, but He did not conquer, at least not in their opinion. This rabbi fell very short of their expectations for a savior.

These first century Jews were not seeing the big picture. They were thinking very short term. The legacy of Jesus Christ extends way beyond His short life on Earth. He had plans too big to be confined in this world alone. He was achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs the things of this life (2 Corinthians 4:17). The problem is that they had a very temporal view of an eternal God.

In the book “The Forgotten Jesus” by Robby Gallaty, it says

“The people had built up in their minds a picture of what the Messiah would be like according to their own expectations, and they would not be able to accept what He had come to do.”

-Robby Gallaty, The Forgotten Jesus: How Western Christians Should Follow an Eastern Rabbi, HarperCollins Publishers

Isn’t this exactly what we are doing to Jesus now? When He doesn’t work in our lives the way WE think He should, we discredit Him.

“If Jesus cared about me, I wouldn’t be unemployed.”

“If Jesus really loved me, my spouse wouldn’t have left me.”

“If God was real, He wouldn’t have let this happen.”

We judge God, and the goodness of God, based off of standards we have made up ourselves. These standards in no way reflect the personality or the will of God. We expect the Messiah to save us from all discomforts and all earthly pain. In reality, He came to do so much more than that. We are limiting God’s abilities. We tend to only see things from our point of view. We can’t see the big things God is doing because we are so focused on Him fixing our little things. If we don’t stop blaming Him for all of our “light and momentary troubles” (2 Corinthians 4:17), we are going to miss the fact that He is continually redeeming the world and everything in it.

Just like the Jewish community in the Bible, we yearn for a Messiah that works for us and grants our wishes and earthy desires. We selfishly think we can use Jesus to our own advantage. We live in such a self-obsessed culture that it is hard for us to imagine that there could be a greater plan at work that does not cater to our personal satisfaction and comfort. It is far past time that we come to terms with the fact that we do not know what is best for our lives, or our world. We don’t get to assign the benchmarks for what a Messiah is, or is not. Following Christ means that you take a back seat and trust His leadership.

It is true that the Jews needed a savior to rescue them from their oppression. What they could not see is that their tribulation was so much worse than physical bondage. What they needed was someone who could redeem a spiritually broken world, full of sin, and put it back together. Still today, we need someone who can erase the sins of our past and make us blameless in the sight of a Holy God. Jesus did just that when He, as a completely guiltless man, died a brutal death in order to offer Himself as a sacrifice for the sins of all mankind. Jesus is still the Messiah, even if He’s not the kind you expected.

4.20.18