SEARCH FOR GOD
JUDAISM
DR. JIM DIXON
APRIL 1, 2012
PSALM 1:1-6, PSALM 2:1-6
The most important question you must answer is, “Who is Jesus Christ?” Who do you say that He is? You might think the most important question is, who am I going to marry? Maybe you think the most important question is, where am I going to go to college? Maybe you think the most important question is, you know, what career field should I enter into? But I promise you that the most important question is, “Who is Jesus Christ? Who do you say that He is?”
Jesus posed this question to 12 Jews, 12 Jewish men. He said to them, who do you say that I am? And it was Peter, one of these 12 Jewish men, who answered, “You are the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” Today we live in a world where very few Jews would make that same confession. We live in a world today where very few Jews believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of the living God.
This morning, as we look at various religions of the world, we focus on Judaism. As we look at the claims of Christ and how we can take the love of Jesus to Jewish people, we want to examine the Jewish faith. So we do this in two ways. First of all we want to look at the basic institutions of Judaism and how those institutions are really fulfilled by Christ.
There are three basic institutions in Judaism, and we can remember them through alliteration. These three basic institutions are Torah, temple, and tribe. By the will of God, Israel and the Jewish people were united by Torah, by temple, and by tribe. So first we look at Torah.
The word Torah is a Hebrew word, and it means “law.” It can also mean instruction, but its primary meaning is simply law. And the word Torah was used initially to refer to the Decalogue, the 10 commandments given to Moses on Mount Sinai. But it had a broader meaning referred to the Pentateuch.
And what is the Pentateuch? The Pentateuch means, “five books.” And the Pentateuch are the five books of Moses—Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. But it is true that sometimes the Jewish people refer to the whole of what we call the Old Testament from Genesis to Malachi as Torah. So Torah may refer to the Decalogue, it may refer to the five books of Moses, and it may refer to the whole of the Old Testament.
Torah United Israel. The law was the standard of righteousness. It was the source of God’s blessing. Torah was precious. So you have passages like Psalms chapter one, where the psalmist writes, “Blessed is the man who walks not in the council of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers. For his delight is in the Torah of the Lord, and on His Torah he meditates day and night. He’s like a tree planted by streams of living water that brings forth its fruit in its season. Its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers.” This is what Torah provides.
So, Torah was precious to the Jews, but there was a problem. It was impossible to keep Torah. It was impossible to obey fully the law. So before the Torah, every Jew was guilty. Now, there were some within the Jewish world called the Pharisees who tried to define Torah in such a way that they could fulfill it. So they defined the law by external behaviors. Then they tried to live out their life in perfect obedience to those external behaviors. They viewed themselves as righteous, and they viewed the rest of the Jews as tragically fallen.
Of course, Jesus condemned them for their self-righteousness. And when Jesus gave the Sermon on the Mount, He wanted us to understand that the law cannot be fulfilled. He wanted us to understand that before the law no one is righteous. He wanted us to understand that the law and obedience to the law begins in the heart. So Jesus said, “You’ve heard it said of old thou shall not kill. Whoever kills will be liable for judgment. But I say to you, whoever is angry with his brother or sister will be liable for judgment. Whoever calls his brother or sister ‘raca,’ or fool, shall be liable to the Sanhedrin, the ruling counsel. And whoever calls his brother or sister ‘you fool!’ shall be liable for hell fire. And you’ve heard it said of old, thou shall not commit adultery. But I say to you, whoever looks upon a woman with lust in his eyes has already committed adultery in his heart. You’ve heard it said of old, love your neighbor. I say to you, love your enemy. Pray for those that abuse you. Bless those who curse you.”
Obviously Christ is wanting us to understand that by the deepest meanings of Torah none of us are righteous. No, not one of us. But of course, in that same sermon, the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, “Think not that I have come to destroy Torah. I have not come to destroy them, but to fulfill them. And I tell you, not one jot or tittle of the Torah shall pass away until all things are fulfilled.” Jesus wants us to understand that there’s a sense in which He brings the fulfillment of Torah. He brings the fulfillment of the law. He alone is righteous. The whole of the Torah, whether you’re talking about the Decalogue, the Pentateuch, or the whole of the Old Testament, He has fulfilled perfectly. So Jesus is the fulfillment of Torah.
Jesus tells us through the gospel that when we accept Him as Lord and Savior, we are saved, not by our righteousness, but by His righteousness—not by our fulfillment of the law, but by His fulfillment of the law. So when we accept Him and His death on the cross, it atones for our sins and His righteousness covers us like a blanket. So that is the beauty and the mercy of the gospel. So we take this message to the Jews, that they might be freed from the burden of the law and the effort to save themselves by their own works. So it’s not that we don’t seek to live righteous lives, but it’s that we understand that we are all sinners desperately in need of grace and we find that grace through our Lord Jesus Christ and His righteousness. So He is the fulfillment of Torah.
He also, in a sense, is a fulfillment of the temple. The temple is foundational as an institution to Judaism. I don’t know what you think of when you think of a temple. Maybe you think of St. Peter’s Basilica in the city of Rome—more accurately, in Vatican City, which is a sovereign nation. In Vatican City, there is St. Peter’s Basilica. The dome of St. Peter’s was designed by Michelangelo. Of course, you have the Sistine Chapel painted by Michelangelo, The Last Judgment. It is a place of incomprehensible beauty and the largest church in the world. The actual basilica is 1,151 feet long, almost four football fields in length, and there are 12,000 rooms within St. Peter’s Basilica. And of course, the large room, the cathedral, holds 80,000 people at one time.
This worship center is bi, holding 3,500 people, but it’s really small compared to St. Peter’s Basilica. But remember this: it’s not a temple. St. Peter’s Basilica, great as it is, is not a temple. On this Catholics and Protestants agree. It is not a temple. In fact, theologians would tell us that there is no building on this earth today that may be rightly called a temple. And you might be thinking, well, wait a minute. I drive through this neighborhood or that neighborhood, and I see “Temple of this,” “Temple of that.” Yes, but theologically, they’re not temples. There is no building that is properly called a temple, because what a temple is, by definition, is a dwelling place for God. A temple is a dwelling place for God.
I know that God is omniscient. I know that God is everywhere present. But in the Jewish temple, God made Himself present in a special and supernatural way. You had within the Jewish temple the Holy of Holies, at the very heart of the Jewish temple, the Holy of Holies was beyond the Holy Place. And in the holy of Holies, there was the Ark of the Covenant. And inside the Ark of the Covenant were the tablets of stone that Moses brought down from the Holy Mountain. The Torah was inside the Ark of the Covenant. And then, above the Ark of the Covenant, were the winged cherubim. Then, as believed by the Jews, the Shekinah—the presence of God, the glory of God—was hovering over the Ark of the Covenant inside the Holy of Holies of the Jerusalem temple. This was, as the Jews believed, the presence of God with them.
And the tabernacle before the temple was a kind of mobile temple. The tabernacle went with the Jews in their wilderness wanderings. It also had within it the holy place and the Holy of Holies, and within the Holy of Holies the Ark of the Covenant and the divine presence, so that wherever the Jews went they had the presence of God. What the temple was all about was the presence of God.
But of course, the temple of Solomon was destroyed by the Babylonians in 587 BC and the temple of Herod was destroyed by Titus and his Roman legions in 70 AD. The temple is no more. You can travel to Jerusalem day, you can go up on the temple Mount—you can go up on Mount Moriah—but the temple is not there. There is, in the eyes of the Jews, no temple there.
Indeed, there’s a sense in which it doesn’t matter, because Christ is the fulfillment of the temple. So you go to John chapter two, and Jesus, as you come to verses 19 and 20, has just turned over the tables of the money changers and cleansed and purifying the temple. And He is lecturing the Jewish authorities and the Jewish religious leaders because they turned the house of God into a place of business and a place of corruption. When they come against Him, He makes this statement: “Destroy this temple and I will raise it up in three days.” What a strange statement.
You look over at Matthew chapter 26, and you see the Sanhedrin making its charges against Jesus. That charge is that He said He would rebuild the temple in three days. “He said, ‘Destroy this temple and I’ll rebuild it in three days.’ Therefore, He deserves to be crucified.” And of course, John explains in John chapter two that when Jesus made this statement, He was not referring to the building of the temple, but He is referring to His own body. Destroy this temple means, “Destroy My body and I will raise it up in three days.” We are to understand that Jesus is the fulfillment bodily of the temple. He is the presence of God. He is Emmanuel, He is God with us. In that incredible statement in Matthew chapter 12, Jesus said to the Jewish religious leaders, “One greater than the temple stands before you; someone greater than the temple is in your midst.” And what was He talking about? He is the presence of God. He is the divine presence. He is the visible image of the invisible God. He is God with us.
And as it says in John chapter one, “The Word dwelt among us. He became flesh and dwelt among us.” The Greek word for dwelt is “tabernacle.” “The word became flesh and tabernacle among us.” So we are not to be confused in any way, but to clearly understand that Jesus is the temple. Jesus is the tabernacle. Jesus is the presence of God. So the whole concept of the temple, that God’s presence would be with His people, is now fulfilled in Jesus, who has come into the world and is indeed with His people.
Then you come to 1 Corinthians six and you see the promise of the gospel that anyone who believes in Jesus Christ and receives Christ as Lord and Savior by the grace of Christ becomes a temple. So Christ, who is God with us, actually makes of us a temple when we receive Christ by bringing His presence, His Holy Spirit, to reside and tabernacle within us. We become temples. So when we’re talking to Jewish people, we seek to help them understand how Jesus is the fulfillment of Torah because He alone is righteous and how He’s the fulfillment of the temple because He’s God with us.
He is also the fulfillment of the institution of the tribe. Of course, the institution of the tribes was foundational to Judaism, and it was by the will of God that the 12 sons of Jacob and their descendants would provide for the 12 tribes of Israel, and that through those tribes the people of God might find identity. Through those tribes, the people of God might fill their need for socialization.
So in the Bible we have the 12 tribes of Israel established by the will of God. We have the tribe of Benjamin, we have the tribe of Issachar, we have the tribe of Gad, we have the tribe of Judah, we have the tribe of Asher, we have the tribe of Reuben, we have the tribe of Simeon, we have the tribe of Zebulon, we have the tribe of Dan, we have the tribe of Naphtali, we have the tribe of Levi, we have the tribe of Joseph, and of course sometimes the tribe of Josephs is split into the tribe of Manasseh and the tribe of Ephraim, the two sons of Joseph. But the tribes of Israel were established by the will of God that the people might relate to one another and find their identity and their socialization.
Of course, Jesus in a sense is the fulfillment of the whole tribal system because He has come to birth His church. He said in Matthew 16, “I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. I will build my church and the powers of death will not prevail against it.” So Jesus came to build His church universal and local. And within His church, we find identity. Within His church, we find our socialization. The church is infinitely greater than the tribes because the church is not based on race. The church is not based on genetics. It’s not based on blood lineage. Red, yellow, black or white, they all are precious in His sight. Jew or Gentile, all may enter the church, whosoever will may come.
So there’s a sense of what Jesus fulfills. He fulfills not only Torah, for He is the righteousness of God, but He fulfills the temple, for He is the presence of God. And indeed, he fulfills the tribes, for through His church we find our identity and our relationships. This is all by His will. We seek to share these things with the Jewish people.
But there’s a second and final teaching, and the second and final teaching is this: Jesus also fulfills the three anointed offices of Judaism. Did you know that there were three anointed offices within Judaism? The Bible makes this clear. Most of you know what those three anointed offices are. You probably could not list them for me, but when you hear them, you’ll say, “aha,” because the three anointed offices of Judaism are prophet, priest, and king.
You look at holy scripture, and when you come to Psalms 105, it talks about the anointing to the prophetic office. You come to Exodus chapter 28 and also in the book of Leviticus, in chapter eight, and you see a reference to the anointing to the priestly office. And of course, you go to 1 Samuel chapter 10 and 1 Samuel chapter 24 and 1 Samuel chapter 26, and you see the whole process of anointing to the office of king.
So these were the three anointed offices of Israel—prophet, priest, king—all by the will of God. Now, you look at Jesus, and He fulfills these three offices. You look at Jesus and understand that He is the Christ. What is the meaning of the word Christ? The Greek word “crio” means anointed. He is the anointed one, the Christ. It is the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew Messiah, which comes from “masah,” which also means the anointed. He is the Messiah. He is the Christ. He is the anointed one. He fulfills the three anointed offices.
He fulfills the office of prophet because He is the Word of God. You look at “nabi,” which is the Hebrew word for prophet, or “prophetes,” which is the Greek word for prophet, and what do they mean? They mean exactly the same thing. Navi means “to speak for.” Prophetes means “to speak for.” Both of them can mean “to speak forth.” They mean to speak for God or to speak forth the word of God. That’s what a prophet does. A prophet speaks for God or speaks forth the word of God. So a prophet is the mouthpiece of God. A prophet is kind of the voice of God. And in the generations of the Jews, there were many prophets, and they were called by God and anointed to that office by God.
Of course, it was a thankless job because the people of Israel really didn’t like prophets. They recognized prophets were called of God, anointed of God, but they didn’t like what prophets had to say, which really means they didn’t like what God had to say. So when the prophets warned them about their immorality, they didn’t like it. When the prophets warned them about their oppression of the poor, they didn’t like it. When the prophets warned them about their absence of love for God or for people, they didn’t like it. Prophets oftentimes were run out of Dodge. I mean, they just fled towns. But at the end of their life, even if they were a total failure, they had a prophet’s reward, for they had spoken forth the word of God.
Now, you look at Hebrews chapter one, and what does it say? In the beginning of that beautiful book it says, “In various ways, God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets. But in these last days, He has spoken through His Son, whom He’s appointed the heir of all things, and through whom also He created the worlds. He reflects the glory of God, bears the very stamp of His nature, upholding the universe by His word of power.”
So this is a statement that Jesus is the fulfillment of the prophetic office. He has spoken in many and various ways through the prophets, but now through the Son. So in John chapter one, we see the introduction to this Gospel and we see the introduction to Jesus. And He is given the title “The Word.” “In then beginning was the Word. The Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him. Without Him was not anything made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of man. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” The Word became flesh and tabernacle among us. So this title is given to Christ, and this title means He’s the fulfillment of the prophetic office. The title is rich. The title of “The Word” has different meanings in Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic.
In Greek, the title means “the mind of God,” because the “logos,” which in Greek is “The Word,” was used by the Greek philosophers to refer to the mind of God. And of course, in Hebrew, the title means the power of God, “dabar,” because God spoke the world into existence. He is the Word, the creative power of God. Dabar. And of course, in Aramaic, which was the common language of the Jews in the days of Jesus, this title is “memrah,” which literally means God.
The Jewish people, the Aramaic-speaking people in the time of Christ were afraid to say the name of God. So they used the word memrah as a circumlocution, a way of saying the name of God without having to actually say the name of God. So it is true. If you look at Jesus, He is the Word. He’s the mind of God. He’s the power of God. He is God.
But there’s also a richness of meaning here that’s far more simple and maybe more important. That’s simply that when we say Jesus is the Word, we mean He’s God’s voice. He’s God’s message. Who better to give God’s message than God? Jesus is Emmanuel, God with us. He’s come into the world and He speaks for God as God. So He is the fulfillment of the prophetic office. He therefore said to His disciples, “When the Holy Spirit comes, He’ll bring to your remembrance all I have spoken to you,” that we might have His word and that the services of the prophetic office might virtually be offered to us in the Bible through Jesus.
So He fulfills the prophetic office. He fulfills the priestly office. I mean, do you know that in the days of Christ there were 7,200 priests in Israel? That’s a lot of priests (some might think too many priests). There were 7,200 priests in Israel in the days of Jesus, and they were divided into 24 sections, and over them all the high priests. And then there were 9,600 Levites. Now, this is according to ancient records, and the statistics vary. But for the most part, it seems accurate to say there were 9,600 Levites in the time of Christ. Again, over all of them was the high priest. The high priest had great authority.
Now, it’s very clear in the Bible that Jesus is the fulfillment of the high priestly office, and we are told that He is the high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. Once and for all, for eternity itself, Jesus Christ is the high priest and the only mediator between God and man. So now when we say that Jesus has fulfilled the high priest the office, what exactly does that mean? What did d the high priest do?
Well, there was one day of the year when he did something very special. He did a lot of important things many days, but one day of the year the high priest did something very special, and that was the 10th day of the seventh month of the Jewish calendar. On the 10th day of the seventh month of the Jewish calendar, the high priest of Israel went into the temple and through the Holy Place and into the Holy of Holies itself, where no one else could go and where he himself could not go except for this one day. He went in there with the blood of animals, that he might pour that blood over the mercy seat of the Ark of the Covenant, seeking to atone for the sins of the people.
That’s what the high priest did. And that’s what the whole priestly office was about: the sacrificial system and the need to atone for the sins of the people. Then the high priest on that same day, on Yom Kippur, on the Day of Atonement, would vest the sins of the people upon the scapegoat, sending the scapegoat into the wilderness unto Azazel, symbolically removing the sin of the people from them.
You understand why Jesus is the fulfillment of the high priestly office. He has, in the offering of His own body, brought sacrifice to an end. He has provided, through the shutting of His blood and through His crucifixion, the atonement for the sin of the world. He is our scapegoat. And when we come to Him and receive Him as Lord and Savior, our sin is forgiven—by His shed blood, by His atonement—and He removes our sin from us as far as the east is from the West. That is the fulfillment of the high priestly office.
Of course, the high priest of Israel not only governed the sacrificial system and the atonement for sin, but the high priestly office also functioned as intercessor for the needs of the people in prayer. And Jesus is our high priest and intercessor. He’s ascended to the Father’s right hand and He intercedes for His people. He intercedes for us. We pray in His name. I hope you pray in His name. We encourage all who believe in Him to pray in His name. Don’t be ashamed of the name of Jesus, whether you’re praying privately or publicly.
Have you heard of the Zoroastrians? I’m sure you’ve heard of Zoroastrians. They are a religious group that exists today in parts of India and in parts of Iran. They came from the ancient Persians and from the teachings of Zoroaster, who was also called Zarathustra. He lived more than a thousand years before Christ, and his teachings were passed on through songs that are still sung today by Zoroastrians. They worship what they call one God, but they believe that that one God has 365 emanations. There are 365 gods that are manifestations of the one God. When they pray, they believe they have to pray in all 365 names if they’re faithful Zoroastrian. So when it’s prayer time, it’s a bummer. I mean, it’s just a real bummer because if you’re faithful, you need to pray your prayer in the name of all 365 deities.
Many historians believe (although there’s some debate and discussion) that the word abracadabra is an ancient Zoroastrian word that was used by lazy Zoroastrians who did not want to say the 365 names. So they’d say their prayers and then they’d just say, “Abracadabra.” Have you ever felt like that? You’re tired, but you need to pray. “Abracadabra!”
But we’ve only got one name. We’ve only got one name we need to pray in. That is the one name of Jesus. “There’s no other name under heaven given amongst men whereby we may be saved.” And He is our high priest and intercessor forever.
So whatever we pray, we pray it in the name of Jesus. So when we go to the Jews, we tell them that Jesus has fulfilled the prophetic office, for He is the Word of God, and He’s fulfilled the priestly office, for He died in atonement for the sin of the world. And when He died, that day was our Yom Kippur, our Day of Atonement. He’s our scapegoat and He intercedes for us. Finally, He is the fulfillment of the kingly office, the third anointed office.
In the united kingdom of Israel, there were three kings—Saul, David, and Solomon. But then in 922 BC, the kingdom divided into North and South—Israel and Judah—and there were many different kings. But the whole institution, the whole anointed office of the king, was looking forward to the Messiah who would come and fulfill it all.
Jesus is that Messiah. I think on Palm Sunday the crowds kind of recognize that blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord. But they did not understand the time of their visitation, because they didn’t understand He was coming into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday not to fulfill the kingly office but to fulfill the priestly office. He had to fulfill the offices of prophet, priest, and king. So He was coming into Jerusalem that day to fulfill the priestly office, that He might die in substitutionary atonement for the sin of the people and be the Lamb of God. He is the Word of God—the prophetic office—but He’s also the Lamb of God. So He came to fulfill the priestly office.
I know many of you have heard of Cecil B DeMille. He died in 1959. He was one of Hollywood’s most famous producers and directors, and he made some famous westerns like The Plainsman in 1937, starring Gary Cooper and Gene Arthur. It was a great movie, award-winning. In 1939, he made Union Pacific, which was also a great movie, starring Joel McCrea and Barbara Stanwyck. And it also was award-winning. In 1952, he made The Greatest Show on Earth, which won the Academy Award for best motion picture. It starred Charlton Heston and Jimmy Stewart and Dorothy Malone. It is an amazing movie. But he was most renowned for a movie he made in 1929 called King of Kings, and it also was award-winning. Even today, though it is ancient and old, it still has little treasures in it.
He said in 1958, one year before he died, that the greatest day of his life took place during the filming of that movie King of Kings. Some of you have probably heard this. This is an amazing thing, because when they filmed the movie they had to show all the different events of Jesus’s life. And when they came to film the crucifixion, they created a mock Calvary and had all the actors and all the photographers and all the tech people there so that they might film the crucifixion. As they came to the day where they would film the crucifixion, it was Christmas Eve when they filmed it. So on Christmas Eve, they were ready to film the crucifixion, and they created this mock Calvary to do that.
Since it was Christmas Eve and they were in the midst of filming the crucifixion and they had the three crosses on the hill, Cecil B DeMille decided to do something he felt in his heart that he should do. He stopped everybody, and he took a moment. He said, I know we’re filming the crucifixion here, and we got a lot of work to do, but you know, this is Christmas Eve. I thought it’d be kind of neat if we just took a moment and had a silent prayer. I’m going to bow my head and close my eyes. Maybe you want to do the same, because this day is special for me.
So he did that. And in in his heart, he said he could just feel his heart pounding in his chest. He felt so nervous and he felt like such a fool, because he knew that this was Hollywood. Even in 1929, this was Hollywood and he knew that a lot of the people in the crowd there, a lot of the actors and actresses, really didn’t share his beliefs (or maybe didn’t have any beliefs). So he kept his eyes closed, and he said, Lord, let this be a special moment. He thought people would just kind of go off and smoke a cigarette or maybe go off to one of the portable bars that they had set up on the mock Calvary. But no. As he had his eyes closed, suddenly heard one of the people begin to sing O Little Town of Bethlehem. And then soon, as he kept his eyes closed, everybody was singing O Little Town of Bethlehem.
When he opened his eyes, each person in the whole crowd was on their knees facing the cross on the top of the hill. All of them were on their knees. The actors, the actresses, and the tech people were all on their knees. And he began to cry. He said later it was the greatest day in his life.
If you think about it, it really was a very special day—Hollywood kneeling before the crucified Christ. That’s a pretty special day. But we all know that Jesus doesn’t reign in Hollywood. We all know He didn’t in 1929 and certainly doesn’t today. Jesus doesn’t reign in Hollywood. He doesn’t really reign in any city of the world today because, as Jesus said, the devil is the Archon, the prince, the ruler of this world. But understand that Jesus is coming again to claim His own and to judge the world and to judge the nations.
He’s coming again, and He will fulfill the kingly office. He will come as King of Kings. Have you ever read Revelation 19? You know how on Palm Sunday Jesus came in on a donkey. And now historians understand that it was not unusual for kings to actually visit villages and cities throughout their empire on donkeys when they came in peace. But when a king came in power, to exercise authority, or even to conquer, the king would come on a white steed. So you have the apocalyptic language of Revelation chapter 19, and you see the words of John: “I saw the heavens opened and, Behold, a white steed. And He who was set upon it was called faithful and true. And in righteousness, he judges and wages war. His eyes are like a flame of fire. On His head, He has many diadems, many crowns. He has a name inscribed, which no one knows, but he Himself, and He is clad in a robe dipped in blood. The name by which He is called is the Word of God. The armies of heaven, arrayed in fine linen, white and pure, followed Him on white horses. From His mouth issued a sharp sword with which to smite the nations. He shall rule them with a rod of iron. He shall tread the wine press of the wrath of God the Almighty. On His robe and on His thigh a name is inscribed: King of Kings and Lord of Lords.”
I love the apocalyptic language of Revelation as it describes the second coming of Jesus Christ in His kingly power. And He will receive His people and He will judge the nations and He will fulfill the kingly office. For He is the Messiah, the anointed one—prophet, priest, and king.
So we go to the Jewish people and we take Christ to them without embarrassment. We take Christ to everybody, to Jew and Gentile, to every nation. And He fulfills. As we share with the Jews, we help them to understand (at least we seek to help them understand) that He fulfills the Torah, for He is our righteousness, and He’s willing to clothe us in His righteousness. And He fulfills the temple, for He is God with us. And He never fails us or forsakes us. And He has fulfills the tribes, for He has established His church and invites anyone who wants to come to join His church and His people. He is prophet, priest, and king. Let’s look to the Lord with a word of prayer.