23: The Life of Jesus: Prophecy

[00:07] Stephanie: Welcome to Deeper Walk’s On the Trail Podcast. You are on the trail with father-daughter duo, Marcus and Stephanie Warner. I’m Stephanie, and I’ll be talking with my father, Dr. Marcus Warner, as we discuss topics that help you stay on the trail to a deeper walk with God.

Episode 23. Today, we’re beginning a new series. With the holidays upon us, it seems only appropriate that we spend some time dwelling on the life of Jesus. Hello, Father.

[00:32] Marcus: Hello, Daughter. We get to be in the same room today. This is nice!

[00:36] Stephanie: We do, and you’re in Kentucky with me.

[00:38] Marcus: I know.

[00:39] Stephanie: Oh, the cat was here.

[00:40] Marcus: There was a cat in here with us. She just had to hear my voice, and she got scared.

[00:44] Stephanie: And she’s hiding under the couch. Okay, here we go.

[00:55] Marcus: Okay.

[00:56] Stephanie: Well, that was adorable. All right, so, yes, I am thrilled to dive into this topic with you. As we start, do you want to cast a vision for application? What are we going to be studying during this series, and how are you hoping our listeners will come away equipped from it?

[01:18] Marcus: Absolutely. So, one of the things that used to bother me, and still does now and then, is that a lot of us Christians who are, by definition, followers of Jesus, would have a very difficult time explaining to anybody what are the prophecies that made us think he’s the Messiah.

What’s the apologetics there? What did Jesus actually accomplish on the cross? What is the evidence for his resurrection? What did Jesus teach? Can you give me a summary of his life?

I find that a lot of times we aren’t really experts on Jesus, even though we are, by definition, followers of Jesus. So, we’re kind of building off of an e-institute course I did a couple of years ago on the life of Jesus. And we’re trying to get this information out to as many people as possible just so we have a better grasp on this foundational information about our faith.

[02:11] Stephanie: I know when you were younger, you went and you found those — not cassettes?

[02:17] Marcus: Yeah, this is really old. So you remember they had movie projectors and in these little canisters were the film strips. So the film strip would load to this projector, and then we would watch. And so for Sunday school, it wasn’t uncommon to have one slide of a still of the life of Jesus. Here’s another still and here’s another still.

And I can remember, even as a young elementary school student, being frustrated that I didn’t know how it all fit together, that I didn’t understand what came first and what came second. Is there an order to the life of Jesus? Because we always seemed to just study random stories — here’s a random story where he heals a leper, here’s a random story where he casts out a demon — but I had no idea what the flow was to his life.

So one Easter morning when we had a break between sunrise service and the rest of church starting, I snuck down into the elementary part of the church and I got out the projector and I got out the canisters, and I just took myself through the life of Jesus to try to figure out how does this all connect?

[03:24] Stephanie: I just love it. I just love little Marcus wanting to understand.

[03:30] Marcus: I want the big picture doggonit.

[03:33] Stephanie: It’s amazing. So I am very delighted to get to talk to you about all of this and what you put together back then and in further study throughout your life. This is going to be great.

So Jesus fulfilled at least 300 prophecies in the Bible. And in your special way, you’ve identified three prophetic pictures that we can use as anchors for how we think through some of these prophecies. Like in our last series, these three pillars, if you will, can be remembered with three S’s: seed, Servant of the Lord and Son of Man.

So we’re going to go through a crash course of these three today, but if you, dear listener, want more detail, Dad taught an entire e-course on the topic that you can find in our learning library. So, Father.

[04:26] Marcus: All right, so yeah, we do. Just like we had three pillars that started with s, we had sacred romance, sovereign lordship, spiritual warfare. Now we have three foundational prophetic pictures, right? So we’ll call them three pictures. And the first one is seed. The second is suffering servant, and then Son of Man.

So the idea here is seed. And when I was in seminary, we learned that a lot of times in our English it says offspring. Especially in the NIV, it said the word was offspring. So Abraham was promised offspring as numerous as the stars in the sky.

At the event where Isaac is bound, and Abraham is ready to sacrifice him — that story is just dripping with overtones of what God was going to do with his own son. So Abraham is told, take your son, your only son, Isaac, and yet we know he had Ishmael. So this idea of your only son, meaning this is your heir, this is the one through the promised seed.

And so this word seed is sometimes called the saga of the seed, and it runs all the way through Genesis. And it starts with the promise in Genesis 3:15 that Eve would have a seed that would crush the serpent’s head. And ever since, that’s the foundation of this prophecy that there’s a war, but the seed of Eve is going to crush the head of the seed of the serpent.

[05:57] Stephanie: I was just listening, and I find it interesting that maybe you could note, women don’t have seed.

[06:05] Marcus: Women have eggs, and men have seed. That’s the way it works. Yes.

[06:10] Stephanie: So why is it the woman’s seed?

[06:13] Marcus: Well, because of that, because it is very unusual language to say the woman will have a seed, that has forever been seen as a prophecy of the virgin birth. When the woman conceives a seed without the help of man, so to speak, the seed isn’t going to come from man, it’s coming from the woman.

So that makes the virgin birth part of this, but in God’s unique way, it wasn’t obvious to everybody that this must be a virgin birth. But once the virgin birth happened, you could look back and go, oh, that’s what this is talking about.

[06:48] Stephanie: Foreshadowing.

[06:49] Marcus: Foreshadowing — you got it.

[06:50] Stephanie: God is a master storyteller.

[06:53] Marcus: So that’s the foundation of this saga of the seed — the seed is going to come through the woman. And then we find out the seed’s going to come through Abraham. And there is this kind of epic struggle throughout. When it goes through Abraham, is it going to be through Ishmael or through Isaac? And God’s clear it’s going to be through Isaac.

And then he has two sons. Is it going to be through Jacob or is it going to be through Esau? And again, God chooses Jacob. And then we see that there are twelve sons of Jacob, whose name is changed to Israel. And it doesn’t go to the firstborn, doesn’t go to the second born, and doesn’t go to the third born. It goes to the fourth.

Now, the reason for this is pretty straightforward, too, and that is there are some dark parts of the Bible that people don’t often know about because we aren’t taught them in Sunday school. But one of them, for example, is the oldest son, Reuben, actually had sexual relations with his stepmother. Israel (or Jacob) had two wives and two concubines. One of the concubines was Bilhah, and Reuben and Bilhah actually had relations together, and so he forfeited his birthright as the firstborn, and that’s why he got bypassed.

Well, the next two, Simeon and Levi, are the two who tricked the men of Shechem into circumcising themselves in order for Shechem to marry their sister Dinah, and then they wiped out all of the men of Shechem. So they were discarded because of this great sin, and that left it to Judah. And so Judah, the fourth born [his name means praise] and the prophecies about the seed all now move into the line of Judah.

And we’re told that a star is going to come from the line of Judah, a scepter will rise from Judah, and the seed is going to come from Judah. And then later on, we see, sure enough, David comes from the line of Judah. Then all the promises regarding the seed come through David.

So the foundation of all of the Messianic prophecies in the Old Testament are related to this idea of seed. It starts with the seed of the woman, then goes to Abraham, then to Isaac, then to Jacob, then to Judah, then to David, and then from David on we’re waiting for Jesus.

[09:06] Stephanie: So cool. There’s so much to explore in seed, and I’m trying to decide how much to press in because we have lots to cover. Do you want to move on to suffering servant?

[09:15] Marcus: I think it’s enough for now to introduce the idea, and we can move on to suffering servant.

[09:19] Stephanie: All right, well, this is going to take us into one of your favorite books of the Bible, possibly. I’ve heard you say it is your favorite book of the Bible, but there’s, you know, wriggle room there.

[09:29] Marcus: Yeah, it’s Isaiah. And, how do I put this? When I was teaching the Old Testament at Bethel — it was then Bethel College and now is Bethel University — I remember the dean asked me to teach a course on Isaiah, and I said, “I don’t think I’m capable. I’m not enough of an Isaiah scholar to teach a whole semester course just on that one book.” And he said, “Well, if you don’t do it, I’ve  got to go find a pastor in the area to do it.” And I’m like, “Okay, I’ll do it.”

And it was a great experience. It was a great excuse to just dive deep into that book. And one of the things I found is that it’s just a book full of compassion for people dealing with wounded hearts. There are few books in the Bible, other than maybe Psalms, that have such comforting images of help, of God’s compassion for those who are broken and the brokenhearted, and of this idea that the Messiah is going to come, particularly for those who have been oppressed and those who have been abused.

And so it’s in Isaiah, for example, that we read, The spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor, to bind up the brokenhearted, to give sight to the blind, release to the captive. That’s Isaiah 61.

[10:47] Stephanie: Which is what Jesus reads.

[10:50] Marcus: Yes, which is what Jesus reads when he introduces his identity to the people. He goes straight there. And in the book of Isaiah, there is a famous portrait of God’s servant, the servant of Yahweh. And the servant of Yahweh is presented in two very starkly different portraits.

Portrait number one is of a blind and deaf and rebellious servant. And this is the idea that God chose — he elected the people of Israel to be his servant — and he had a purpose for that. He wanted them to bring his glory to the world, his light to the world, but they messed up completely. They were blind servants who were rebellious, who turned to idolatry. And he’s like, ‘Who’s blind like my servant?’

And so there’s parts of this where you’re like, wait a second. It feels almost schizophrenic because is the servant of Yahweh a good person or a bad person? But what we find is that in this chosen line — which is directly related to the seed image — Israel, as God’s chosen seed, is going to be embodied by one particular seed who is the servant of Yahweh. And so what we see is that Israel as a whole failed in their task as the seed of Yahweh.

And so God is going to, through them, bring up another servant who will be his chosen servant, and he will succeed. He will bring justice to the nations, he will bring righteousness, and he will establish a throne. And then you get this unique thing that not only is he going to be victorious, but in there is this startling image of him suffering. He’s rejected, and he’s despised and rejected.

So I’ve often felt that every Christian really needs to master Isaiah 53. If there’s only one passage of Scripture that every Christian should know inside and out, it’s Isaiah 53, because that is the foundational passage that tells us how to interpret what happened on the cross. For example, when you see Jesus on the cross, how do you know how to interpret what you’re seeing?

What did the Jewish religious leaders see? Well, they saw that they had won. They saw that, okay, we have successfully silenced this blasphemer. So they saw a blasphemer getting what he deserved. What did the Romans see? They just saw somebody who was another poor sap being crushed by the Roman machine. They didn’t see anything special.

So how do we know that when Jesus died on the cross, he was dying for us, that this was an act of atonement? And the answer is, it goes fundamentally back to Isaiah 53, where it says he was despised and he was rejected. He suffered. All we, like sheep, have gone astray. You know, we have each turned our own way, but the Lord laid on him all of our iniquity. And so we have this idea that Jesus is the substitute. He died for our substitution.

And not only does Isaiah 53 talk about him dying, it talks about him being buried with the wealthy, and it talks about him rising again, because after the suffering of his soul, he will see the light of life, he will see his children and be satisfied. So it’s all right there. His rejection, the purpose of his death — that is for substitution — it’s to bear our sin. His death, his burial and his resurrection are all there.

That’s why Paul can write in 1 Corinthians 15, I pass on what I received to you as of first importance, that Christ died according to the Scriptures, that he was buried according to the Scriptures, that he was raised. He’s probably got Isaiah 53 in mind for most of those.

[14:29] Stephanie: That’s so epic.

[14:31] Marcus: It is. It’s an epic passage, no doubt.

[14:34] Stephanie: I’m really excited. Next semester, I’m going to be doing an exegesis of Isaiah with Doctor John Oswalt.

[14:42] Marcus: Oh, yeah.

[14:42] Stephanie: And Isaiah has been his baby in terms of what he studied with his life. So I’m so excited.

[14:48] Marcus: Yeah. Dr. Oswald’s a bit of a bridge for us, right? Because he was at Trinity when I was there, and now he’s at Asbury while you’re there.

[14:54] Stephanie: I got a lovely little note from his wife, who was like, oh, I remember your grandpa and your grandma. It was so sweet. Now for a crash course on the Son of Man. What does this title even mean? Where does it come from?

[15:08] Marcus: All right, so we started with seed, right? And this idea of the seed of woman who’s going to become the seed of Abraham and eventually the seed of David. And that is the foundation for the suffering servant in Isaiah. And now we come to this idea of Son of Man.

Most of us — if you’re like me — grew up being taught the Son of Man was the title of Jesus’ humanity. He’s the Son of God and Son of Man, but the reality is that Son of Man in the Old Testament is a divine title. And to understand this, we have to go back to the book of Daniel.

Daniel has a vision. He says, in my vision at night, I saw thrones. And he saw the throne room of God. We would call that the divine council, using Michael Heiser’s now famous terminology. So in the throne room of God, there’s thrones set up. The Ancient of Days takes his seat, and he says one like a Son of Man enters the presence of the Ancient of Days, and everybody serves him. And that word serve is the same Hebrew word that’s used for worship.

So in a sense, it’s like the whole world worships the Son of Man. So that raises a significant question. Who can walk into the presence of the Ancient of Days and receive worship?  Who can walk into the presence of the Ancient of Days and everybody bows down to him. So, this is not a title of his humanity. It’s also in this passage where it talks about one coming on the clouds — the Son of Man coming on the clouds.

So Jesus at his trial, when they’re pinning him down, are you the Messiah or not? This is what he quotes. He says, ‘I’m the Son of Man, and you will see me coming on the clouds of heaven.’ Now, this idea of riding on the clouds is kind of a Baal metaphor, because Baal was a storm god, and he was pictured riding on the clouds in a lot of Canaanite literature, but in Hebrew Scripture that image is corrected.

So no, Yahweh is the storm God, Yahweh is the rider on the clouds, and Yahweh is the one who does all of this. And so again, presenting himself as the rider on the clouds is another divine image. It’s the idea that I am the true divinity here.

[17:19] Stephanie: It makes me think of — is it Psalm 18? There is some very epic psalm where it just describes God, like, riding on the clouds.

[17:29] Marcus: Yeah, I can’t remember what it is off the top of my head. I’m thinking it’s Psalm 29. There are several passages of Scripture that talk about his voice like thunder and lightning coming from his hands. And part of what they’re doing here — it’s an apologetic against Baal saying it’s not Baal who does all this. It is Yahweh.

So the Son of Man image is this idea that Jesus is saying he is the supreme ruler of the divine council, he is the supreme ruler of all of the thrones. So in other words, this idea that Paul talks about in Ephesians, where he says Jesus has been given a place of authority above thrones and dominions and principalities and powers and every title that can be given — not only in this age but in the age to come — he probably has this Daniel text in mind, because here we see the Son of Man walking into the presence of the Ancient of Days with thrones laid out, and they are all acknowledging his supremacy.

And so we see that when Jesus died on the cross, when he was raised from the dead, he was given   a name above every name. He was given all authority in heaven and on earth. And as a result of that, he was found worthy to open the scrolls in Revelation, because not only was he the crown prince by birthright, he was the prince by victory.

And so we see all of this tied up in this Son of Man imagery. So rather than us thinking of the Son of Man, almost as a reflection of his weakness, that’s not really where the Old Testament takes us.

So there’s our three core pictures of the Messiah and Messianic prophecy. I think every Christian ought to really have a good handle on these: seed, suffering servant, and Son of Man.

[19:18] Stephanie: So epic. Everybody go listen to the e-course and go deeper and study these passages.

Next week, we’re going to continue looking at the life of Jesus with an episode going through your acrostic, S.M.A.R.T. But for now, any final thoughts on the episode application?

[19:39] Marcus: Well, I am looking forward to talking about S.M.A.R.T. That actually came when I was asked to teach fifth graders about Jesus. And I wanted to give them a simple way that they could walk through and remember the life of Jesus and what it was all about, as well as the order of key events in his life. So we’ll look at that next week.

For this one, the prophetic portrait of Jesus is part of the worldview that grounds our faith and reminds us this is who we serve. I like to watch period pieces now and then, kind of with the idea of what’s going on downstairs and upstairs, like a Downton Abbey kind of thing.

So you get this picture that what gave a servant status was who they served. And we are servants of the most high God and of the Messiah. And our status comes from who we serve. And I think it’s good for us to remind ourselves of these foundations. And it’s also a good idea to just be able to explain to other people the reason for our hope, and prophecy is certainly a big part of that reason.

[20:53] Stephanie: Very good. Well, it has been a delight to be sitting in person with you here talking about Messianic prophecy. This is awesome. So thank you, Father, and thank you all for joining us on the trail today.

If you want to keep going deeper with us on your walk with God, please subscribe to the Deeper Walk podcast and share with your friends. You can find more at our website, deeperwalk.com.

Thanks again. We’ll see you back next week.