The Hope of the Believer . . .

RECOGNITION OF THE LORDSHIP OF JESUS (1)

W. Carl Ketcherside  

The Christian is one who accepts as a fact that the ongoing history of mankind was interrupted by a unique event in which the Eternal One broke through the flesh curtain, and entered the realm of time and space. Deity was manifest in human form in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. This divine-human encounter took place in the days of Augustus Caesar when Rome was mistress of the world, and specifically in an outlying province of the empire called Palestine.

Although it was singular, this advent was not unexpected. At the time the world was divided into two ethnic groups-Jew and Gentile-and the evidence is that both of these had been conditioned to expect the coming of a divine personage to share the fate of mankind and to alter the destiny of the world.

The Jews generally accepted as a fact that their remote ancestor, Abraham, had been called out from the polytheistic culture and influence of Chaldea, in order to become the progenitor of a race through which the God that made heaven and earth would eventually bless all the families of the earth. It was not held that the blessing would accrue from the race as a whole, but rather that it would produce an individual through whose beneficent rule peace would reign upon the earth.

The foundation of this hope lay in both promise and prediction. An example of the latter is found in the last words of Jacob to his sons, the tribal heads who gathered about his bedside for his final blessing. Unto Judah he said, "The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come, and unto Him shall the gathering of the people be." (Genesis 49:10) The word "Shiloh" was interpreted as meaning "the Tranquilizer, the Pacificator, the Peacemaker." It is understood to mean that a rule of peace would be inaugurated upon earth through the ministrations of one sent from God for that purpose.

That this is true is evidenced by the rendering in the various Targums. The Jerusalem Targum reads, "Kings shall not fail from the house of Judah, nor skillful doctors of the law from their children's children, till the time come when the King Messiah shall come." The Chaldean version says, "One having principality shall not be taken from the house of Judah; nor a scribe from his children's children, until the Messiah come, whose the kingdom is."

It is important to note that the tribal identity of Judah, was to be preserved until the peacemaker should come, and that His coming was identified with rulership or dominion. In other words peace would reign because of the reign of the Messiah. When He was regarded as having authority in the lives of men, and his rule was respected, peace and tranquility would ensue, and unity would prevail through the magnetism of His personality. "Unto Him shall the gathering of the people be."

It was because of the firm belief in the coming of the Messiah that the Jews regarded themselves as recipients of and guardians of the oracles of God. This stimulated their reading of Torah and Hafterah, law and prophets, and prepared them to expect the Messiah. At the time when Jesus was upon the earth, and his forerunner was proclaiming the imminent approach of the kingdom "the people were in expectation, and all men mused in their hearts of John, whether he was the Messiah, or not." (Luke 3:15). The Jewish nation at that very time, because of ardent study of the covenant scriptures, was instructed to believe that the advent of the Messiah was imminent.

At the same time, the non-Jewish world was seething in an undercurrent of hope which centered around the advent of a divine personage. We cannot pause here along the way to trace the origin of the pagan yearning, or even to review the means by which the hope came to be centered in a person, although the temptation to do so is almost irresistible. We must content ourselves with brief references which will serve to document what we have suggested and then move on to weighty matters of deduction.