Jesus: The Unveiling of the Messiah's True Identity

Now, at this point, a carefully guarded secret, that Jesus had kept His disciples under wraps concerning, was now made public. Anytime there was mention during Jesus earthly ministry about His being the Messiah, He would instruct His disciples as He had at the transfiguration, “Tell no man.” We call this the Messianic secret. [00:04:28]

The popular hope, the popular expectation of the Messiah, who was to come, would be a great warrior who would overthrow the Roman oppression and liberate the people of Israel from the yoke of Rome. But Jesus’ understanding of the Messiah was much deeper. He took all the strands of expectancy in Old Testament prophecy and knit them together into a complex portrait of what it would mean to be Messiah. [00:05:18]

And the element that was most important in that was the element of being a lowly servant who would suffer. Isaiah’s portrait of the Messiah in the latter chapters of that book was the portrait of the suffering servant. And that was not popular in the public appeal, and so Jesus had kept His identity under wraps until now. [00:05:54]

Now, the cloak of concealment is removed, and Jesus now, clearly fulfilling Old Testament prophecy, comes into the city in a triumphal procession indicating His position of royalty. And when the people said, “Who is this who’s coming in in this manner, where the people were shouting, ‘Hosanna, blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.’?” [00:06:31]

But if we look further in the New Testament, we understand that there are not merely two offices that Jesus fulfills, but there are three. And those three offices we call in theology the munus triplex, that is, the threefold office of Jesus. And the three offices that He is called to fulfill in His work are the offices of prophet, priest, and king. [00:07:21]

Now, what made them mediators was that they in some way stood between the people and God. I like to say that the basic difference between the prophet and the priest was this, that the prophet was God’s spokesman. The prophet would announce his statements with the preface, “Thus saith the Lord.” The prophets were agents of revelation. [00:09:29]

The priests, on the other hand, who were in a regular office and not a special charismatically appointed office like the prophets were, they had the function of carrying out the normal duties of the religious organization of Israel. And the two functions, more than any other that they performed, were first of all the offering of sacrifices and second of all the offering of prayers. [00:10:10]

Now, as far as the prophets were concerned, in New Testament categories, the supreme prophet of all time is Jesus. Jesus doesn’t just speak the Word of God. He is the Word of God. He’s the very incarnation of the Word of God. And He speaks with the full authority of the Father, when He speaks. Now, He also makes prophecies about the future. [00:12:00]

The amazing difference between the Old Testament prophets and the New Testament prophet Jesus has to do with what I call the subject and objective elements of prophecy. The subjective elements of prophecy refer to the prophets themselves as human subjects, and they would speak their words, and they had a content of future prediction that was a description of the One who was to come. [00:12:45]

The principal object of the priestly task was to offer sacrifices in behalf of the people. But in Jesus the priesthood finds the marriage once again of the subject and the object because when Jesus offers the sacrifice, the sacrifice that He offers is the sacrifice of Himself. And all the sacrifices that had been offered by the priests in the Old Testament were basically symbolic. [00:14:50]

The promise that God had made to the people of Israel of their future and perfect King, whose kingdom would reign forever, was a king who would come from the loins of David and who would come from the tribe of Judah. As early as Jacob’s blessings in the Old Testament, he said the scepter shall not depart from Judah until Shiloh comes. [00:17:22]

And the New Testament goes to great lengths to demonstrate that Jesus was of the tribe of Judah, so that He would be qualified to be king. But He’s also called the priest. How can He be priest and king at the same time because the priests were from the tribe of Levi in the Aaronic priesthood? [00:18:06]