Jesus–As Messiah – What Does This Mean?

The Confession of St. Peter

Encore Post: In Northeast Israel, at the base of Mount Hermon, a giant spring gushed water out of a cave that flowed into Huela Marsh, the headwaters of the Jordan River. During the centuries following the death of Alexander the Great, Syria’s Greek rulers built a shrine there to the god Pan. During the earthly ministry of Jesus, Herod the Great’s son, Philip, built a town nearby and named it after Tiberius Caesar and himself. His father had added a temple to Caesar Augustus to the previous shrine to Pan. A major trade road, “The Way to the Sea” ran through the town on its way to the Sea of Galilee and the Mediterranean Sea. At the end of his ministry in Galilee, Jesus took his disciples to this location to prepare them for his final year of ministry, suffering, death and resurrection. (Matthew 16:13-28)

At this place Jesus asked his disciples who people thought he was. They replied that people said he was a prophet, maybe even John the Baptist or Elijah. Jesus then followed up. “Who you say I am?” St. Peter replied, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God.” God the Father had revealed this to Peter, but it became clear very quickly that he really did not know what a Messiah was to do. Jesus explained to the disciples that he would soon suffer, die for the sins of the world and rise from the dead in three days. Peter tried to scold him. It could not happen to him — he was the Messiah, after all. Jesus replied by calling Peter Satan. Anyone that would be his disciple, would need to take up his own cross and follow Jesus.

Even though Peter was badly mistaken, Jesus praised his confession that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. The confession was so important that Jesus gave him the name Peter — little rock. The confession itself is the rock on which Jesus builds his church. Even hell itself cannot destroy that church. So, since the early years of the Twentieth Century, the Lutheran Church has celebrated this confession on January 18th, a day always in the season of Epiphany, when it meditates on the ways that God the Son reveals himself to us.

Rev. Robert E. Smith

Concordia Theological Seminary

Fort Wayne, Indiana

Last Things #14: The Missing Millennium

Encore Post: Called the “Jewish opinion” by the Lutheran Confessions, the belief in a Millennium comes from a face value reading of Old Testament prophecy and poetry about the Church or about eternal life with God after the Second Advent. It also treats the Book of Revelation, written in a symbolic code called Apocalyptic, in a similar way. By doing so, it uses difficult to understand passages to complicate the very clear words of Jesus, Peter, Paul and other New Testament writers. It is the view of the Pharisees that caused them to rule out Jesus as the Messiah, because he did not intend to battle the Romans and to miss that the Scriptures pointed to the birth, life, sufferings, death and Resurrection of the Son of God.

The word itself comes from Revelation 20, where the reign of Christ through in his church is described as 1000 years. This number is not a literal 1000 years, but is Jewish numerology. The number ten meant to them perfection and when multiplied three times, the number of God, means when everything is completed. It points to our times, when the Gospel has reached every corner of the earth.

While it may seem harmless to believe such things, it detracts from the what Christ has commanded us in order to read every event, looking for the return of Christ. Instead, we should be ready, as Jesus instructs us, making disciples of all nations by baptizing and teaching them, knowing he is with us always.

©2018, 2023 Robert E. Smith. All rights reserved. Permission granted to copy, share and display freely for non-commercial purposes. Direct all other rights and permissions inquiries to cosmithb@gmail.com

Sunday School: Solomon Asks for Wisdom

Encore Post: When God invited Solomon to ask for a blessing, Solomon asked for wisdom. Solomon’s request pleased God for several reasons. First, he was humble, realizing his limitations. He was still very young and had little experience governing. Second, he sought to serve God first. He asked for wisdom — the ability to use knowledge well to meet needs and discernment — the ability to tell right from wrong. He sought first God’s Kingdom and righteousness. God granted him what he asked for — and riches, fame and long life as well.

King Solomon was the son of King David and Bathsheba. His life shows how completely God forgives, since David committed great sins with and because of Bathsheba. They deserved to die, but God forgave them, let them live and gave them a second son. Solomon would be an ancestor of the Messiah.

Under Solomon, Israel became a prosperous and powerful nation. Solomon was a great organizer. He reformed the kingdom’s bureaucracy, making it more efficient and channeling its prosperity effectively. He built God’s Holy Temple and numerous other buildings. He became a collector of proverbs, many of which appear in the Book of Proverbs. According to tradition, the Books of Ecclesiastes and Song of Songs are written by the King, although much debate about this exists among scholars.

As great as he was, Solomon was a sinner also. He married hundreds of wives, mainly to secure treaties. He allowed them to worship the gods of their fathers and even constructed temples for them. For this reason, God caused the kingdom to be divided during his son’s reign. Yet, for the sake of the one greater than Solomon, his sins are forgiven, along with ours.

Digging into the Old Testament: Marcion

Encore Post: If we think of a pendulum, it swings one way or the other. Let’s imagine the Ebionites to one extreme. At the other extreme would be the man named Marcion.

Unfortunately, to my knowledge we do not have any of Marcion’s own writings at our disposal. However, we have the early Church Fathers and their writings against his teachings. Ireaneaus of Lyon wrote against him in his work Against Heresies.

From Ireaneaus and some of the other Apostolic Fathers we learn that Marcion held to the idea that the the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New were not the same. Marcion saw the god of the Testament as a lesser Creator god who even was possibly evil. The god of the Old Testament was the Jewish God, and not the Father of the True Christ. The Old Testament may have prophesied about a Christ, but not the true one.

For Marcion, Jesus (the true Christ) came to subvert the Creator and overthrow the law and the prophets. Marcion even went so far as to change the words of Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew to make Jesus say, “I have not come to fulfill the law but to abolish it.” This is the exact opposite of what Jesus says He came to do.

This is a major problem. If the God of the Old Testament is not the God of the New, there is no promise of salvation by grace alone through faith alone. There would not be those who are righteous by faith. For all this flows out of the Old Testament. There would be no hall of faith, there would not fathers of the faith like Abraham. Jesus, Himself points us to them in the Old Testament to emulate, to rejoice with Abraham at Jesus’ Day. There would be nothing to learn from the Old Testament, even though Paul, one of the New Testament writers who is okay for Marcion, says we ought to learn from the ancient Israelites in the wilderness.

Rev. Jacob Hercamp
St. Peter’s Lutheran Church
La Grange, MO

Blog Post Series

Jesus Rejected in Nazareth

Encore Post: Synagogues are like churches. They are places where the Jews gather on the Sabbath (Saturday) to hear a passage from the Old Testament read, to hear a sermon and to pray together. The Old Testament is read from a scroll, instead of a book. Someone would help the reader take it out of a storage box called an ark, unwrap it and roll the text to the place where he should start to read. Often the people would sing while they do this.

When the reading was finished, it was put away until the next Sabbath. When a boy reached the age of twelve, he got to read it for the first time in event called Bar Mitzvah, which means “Son of the Covenant.” If the reader was also a teacher, he would sit down and explain the reading.

This is what Jesus was doing when he returned to Nazareth. He read from Isaiah 61. This passage predicts the ministry of the Messiah to preach the Gospel and heal the sick. He announced that he was that Messiah.

The problem was his neighbors and friends had a hard time believing he was the Messiah. He grew up in such a normal way that there was hardly anything for the Gospels to report for the first thirty years of his life. The contractor down the block is the Messiah — please! They wanted results! What’s in it for them? Nothing! Their lack of faith in Jesus meant he could not perform miracles at home.

That day they tried to kill him, it failed. But it would not be long before Jesus would go to Jerusalem. There he suffered and died for their sins, ours and the sins of the whole world. When he rose from the dead, he set us all free. When he returns for us, then we will also be healed — not for a little while, but for forever.

The Law of God is Good and Wise

Encore Post: The natural world often calls to us with beautiful sunrises and sunsets, filled with colors that contrast with snow during the winter, complement in spring and summer the green of forests and fields and the green-blue of lakes and oceans, and that complete the wide range of colors in northern mountains, clothed with fall foliage. Even in our world damaged by the fall, there is order, symmetry and rhythm. All of these things are ordered by our Creator with unseen and often unknown principles — laws — that provide for us a place to call home and allow us to plan our lives in it.

The law of God is knowledge of God’s will and the way he wants his children to live. When God formed Adam from the dust of the earth, God built into him was the law of God, written into his heart. Adam loved God, wanted to serve him and knew what pleased the Father. When God formed Eve, this knowledge of God’s law passed down to her as well. Only a few of God’s commandments were spoken to him: be fruitful and multiply, rule over the living things on the Earth and eat plants (Genesis 1:29-30), work in and keep the Garden of Eden and do not eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and of Evil. (Genesis 2:15-17)

When Adam and Eve disobeyed God and brought sin into the world, the image of God within them was destroyed. Some knowledge of his law remains written in our hearts, but it is very distorted, so that, ironically, we no longer know good from evil. When God in his love and mercy promised that the Messiah would come one day to crush the head of Satan, (Genesis 3:15) he began to reveal his law, giving it in detail to Moses. It now serves three purposes, which we will take up in another post.

To:Child and Pupil of the Catechism

The Nativity of St. John the Baptist

“What will this child be?” That was the question of the people who witnessed John’s father bless the Lord God upon John’s birth and naming. Zechariah, you might remember, was so skeptical when he first got the news of John’s arrival that God shut his mouth and kept him mute until naming the boy John.

The appointed lectionary readings for the day give a bit more information about what John would do and be. He is to be the voice in the wilderness, preparing the way of the Lord.

Also from the book of Malachi and from Jesus’ own mouth we learn something else about what John was to become. John is the Elijah promised before the great and awesome day of the Lord (Mt 11:13-15; Mt 17:12-13).

But one thing that John is not is this: John is not the Messiah (John 1: 19-23) . John is adamant about his position as this voice in the wilderness. Even though John’s birth was prophesied, and even though John preaches with power, and even though he has a large following, John does not preach himself. As a matter of fact, he does not preach anyone except Christ and Kingdom that Christ ushers in, which the kingdom of forgiveness of sins.

The song of Zechariah also known as the Benedictus, also answers the question from above. John will the be the prophet of the Most High. He will give knowledge of salvation to the people of God in the forgiveness of their sins (Luke 1:76-77). The Baptism that John baptizes with comes from God (Mt. 21:25), and it a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins (Luke 3:3). The same message that John will preach will be preached by Jesus, but Jesus is also the fulfillment of it and thus mightier (Luke 3:15-16).

Who will John be? He is the one who will reveal Jesus to be “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29)!

John was sent to prepare the hearts of the people of Israel for Christ. We too hear his words, and they still ring true for us. Even at his birth, we know from God’s words through the song of Zechariah who John will be.

Rev. Jacob Hercamp
St. Peter Lutheran Church, La Grange, MO