Leading a Rebellion: Jesus--Rebelled Against Expectations

Leading a Rebellion: Jesus

Rebelled Against Expectations

Rebel:

-A rebel is a person who resists any authority, control, or tradition.

Scripture: Zechariah 9:9

Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion!
    Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem!
Behold, your king is coming to you;
    righteous and having salvation is he,
humble and mounted on a donkey,
    on a colt, the foal of a donkey.

The Story So Far:

            The Jews had certain expectations for what the Messiah would look like. They even had scripture with which to back it up. It isn’t that the Jews were Biblically illiterate as to why they missed the promised Messiah, it’s because they expected a different type of Messiah, and were too stubborn and bullheaded to admit that they might have been wrong.

            The Jews had expected to be able to recognize the Messiah, but prophecies in Isa 53 say that, “he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him.” Or in other words He looked like everybody else. We see pictures of Him and He is always wearing a white robe, with a blue sash, and His hair and beard are amazing. You can just look at Him and say, “Well, obviously, that’s the Messiah!” The other major expectation was that He would be an earthly, conquering king. Ever since Moses’ time God had provided major victories over Israel’s enemies which made their God look awesome. Every nation and every country had their own god or gods, and if one country beat another in war it meant that their god was better than the other nation’s god. It was a “my dad can beat up your dad” mentality. By the time Jesus had shown up Israel had been under someone else’s rule for several hundred years. They expected the Messiah, who was to be a descendant of David (a mighty warrior leader of Israel) to lead a rebellion against the Romans, gain sovereignty, and expand its boundaries to include the entire world until there were no other gods to be worshiped anywhere. Unfortunately, many of them weren’t true worshipers of God themselves. They were worshipers of a religious system and traditions. They loved the attention from men, loved being important, and loved wearing fancy costumes.

            There are a lot of passages that describe the Messiah as a conquering king, but the idea that their Messiah would come, die, and come back a second time as Christians understand it was unfathomable to them. Even JBAP came preaching about a conquering Messiah in Luke 3 saying the Messiah would chop down trees that didn’t bear fruit and burn the useless parts in an unquenchable fire. His understanding that the Messiah would come as a conquering hero may have led him to question if Jesus was actually the Messiah after all. He sent his messengers to ask Jesus if He was the Messiah or should they be expecting another. Jesus answered him by telling the messengers to report back what they saw, the blind see, the lame walk, and the poor have the gospel preached to them.

The Rebellion:

            So what did Jesus coming looking like that everyone missed Him? Just as there are passages that prophecy that the Messiah will come as a conquering hero, there are other passages that prophecy that He will come as a suffering servant, and as a shepherd, a very lowly position.

Isaiah 53

 Who has believed what he has heard from us?^[a]
    And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
² For he grew up before him like a young plant,
    and like a root out of dry ground;
he had no form or majesty that we should look at him,
    and no beauty that we should desire him.

³ He was despised and rejected^[b] by men;
    a man of sorrows,^[c] and acquainted with^[d] grief;^[e]
and as one from whom men hide their faces^[f]
    he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

⁴ Surely he has borne our griefs
    and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteemed him stricken,
    smitten by God, and afflicted.
⁵ But he was pierced for our transgressions;
    he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
    and with his wounds we are healed.
⁶ All we like sheep have gone astray;
    we have turned—every one—to his own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
    the iniquity of us all.

⁷ He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,
    yet he opened not his mouth;
like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,
    and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,
    so he opened not his mouth.
⁸ By oppression and judgment he was taken away;
    and as for his generation, who considered
that he was cut off out of the land of the living,
    stricken for the transgression of my people?
⁹ And they made his grave with the wicked
    and with a rich man in his death,
although he had done no violence,
    and there was no deceit in his mouth.

¹⁰ Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him;
    he has put him to grief;^[g]
when his soul makes^[h] an offering for guilt,
    he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days;
the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.
¹¹ Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see^[i] and be satisfied;
by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant,
    make many to be accounted righteous,
    and he shall bear their iniquities.
¹² Therefore I will divide him a portion with the many,^[j]
    and he shall divide the spoil with the strong,^[k]
because he poured out his soul to death
    and was numbered with the transgressors;
yet he bore the sin of many,
    and makes intercession for the transgressors.

            They were expecting a Messiah to come in on a war horse—Jesus rode the foal of a donkey into Jerusalem for His triumphal entry. They expected Him to wipe out every pagan, and those that were not true believers—Jesus offered peace and acceptance to Gentiles and sinners alike. They expected Him to raise up a powerful rebellion against the Romans—Jesus often retreated when the crowds grew really large, and intentionally drove many of them away. They expected Him to deal with their physical captors—Jesus dealt with their spiritual captors of sin.

            Jesus fulfilled, and is fulfilling every prophecy concerning the Messiah. He just did it, and is doing it, in a way that the Jews did not expect. Here’s an interesting bit of information

            The following probabilities are taken from Peter Stoner in Science Speaks (Moody Press, 1963) to show that coincidence is ruled out by the science of probability. Stoner says that by using the modern science of probability in reference to eight prophecies, 'we find that the chance that any man might have lived down to the present time and fulfilled all eight prophecies is 1 in 10 to the the 17th power." That would be 1 in 100,000,000,000,000,000. In order to help us comprehend this staggering probability, Stoner illustrates it by supposing that "we take 10 to the 17th power silver dollars and lay them on the face of Texas. They will cover all of the state two feet deep.

            "Now mark one of these silver dollars and stir the whole mass thoroughly, all over the state. Blindfold a man and tell him that he can travel as far as he wishes, but he must pick up one silver dollar and say that this is the right one. What chance would he have of getting the right one? Just the same chance that the prophets would have had of writing these eight prophecies and having them all come true in any one man."
            Stoner considers 48 prophecies and says, "we find the chance that any one man fulfilled all 48 prophecies to be 1 in 10 to the the 157th power, or 1 in 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,00 0,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,00 0,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,00 0.
            The estimated number of electrons in the universe is around 1079. It should be quite evident that Jesus did not fulfill the prophecies by accident."
            This information was taken from the book Evidence that Demands a Verdict by Josh McDowell.

   Application:

            Maybe God has dealt with you in a way that you expected. Maybe your parents got divorced. Maybe your parents don’t even like you or want you around. Maybe you have lost loved ones. Or someone we love may have a terrible disease. God may not deal with us in the way we expect Him too. He is not a vending machine where we tell Him what we want and He gets it for us. He knows what’s best for us, and will give us what we need. Romans 8:28 says, “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.”

            My challenge for this week is to look back at your life and think about three things that you thought were just the worst thing that could have happened to you, but can see now that God had a special plan.

            I remember sending a note to a girl I liked in the fourth grade asking her if she would “go out” with me. Where we were to go, I have no idea. I taped a tootsie pop to it and stuck it in her desk. She wrote that she didn’t want to on my original note, couldn’t even write a new note, and kept the tootsie pop. I thought that was the worst. It was embarrassing and she kept my tootsie pop. But looking back, clearly I wasn’t supposed to be with her anyways.  

            I tried out for the basketball two times in school and didn’t make the cut either time. Basketball was a huge deal at our school, and I couldn’t understand why it happened. I then progressed in other sports until I eventually became an All-American and also got 2^nd place in the 1500 at the Division III National Championship.

            What about you? What has God done in your life?

            What does Jesus being the Messiah mean to you? He came to conquer. He conquered sin and death, setting everyone who trusts in Him free. Have you accepted Him as your Lord and Saviour?