Reflections on Jesus--Day 2

The test for whether a prophet is a true or false prophet is simple--do his or her prophecies/predictions come true?  It is said that the entire OT is about Jesus.  I once thought this was stretching the truth.  Now, I think differently.  Not only was Jesus prophesied by Isaiah, but Jesus was even prophesied by Moses, or whoever wrote Genesis.

Isaiah is considered one of the greatest Old Testament prophets, both because his short-term prophecies came true, and because his prophecy of the Messiah came true.  In Isaiah Ch. 53, we are told that the Messiah will have the following characteristics:

1)no form or comeliness, no beauty that we should desire him;

2)despised and rejected by man;

3)a man or sorrows, acquainted with grief;

4)like one from whom men hide their faces, he was despised;

5)he bore our griefs and carried our sorrows;

6)yet we considered him stricken, smitten, and afflicted by God;

7)he was wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities;

8)by his stripes we are healed;

9)he was oppressed, yet he was submissive and opened not his mouth;

8)like a lamb, he was led to the slaughter, and he opened not his mouth;

10)he was cut off out of the land of the living for the transgressions of his people

11)he was assigned a grave with a rich man;

12)although he had done no violence;

13)neither was there any deceit in his mouth.

Do these sound like the characteristics of a Messiah, of one who was sent to save his people, of one who was sent to save and renew the world?  No, they don't.  That is one reason why he was rejected by the religious people of his day--he did not throw the Romans out.  But, had he thrown the Romans out, the religious people would have only become more religious, more self-righteous, and less sensitive to the needs of the downtrodden.  

When my son Mathis was in Second Grade, we were going over this scripture and the characteristics of Christ.  Mathis said: "If Jesus had thrown the Romans out, the Jews would only have become more smug."  "Smug" was a word that was being frequently used in Mathis' class to describe kids who thought a lot of themselves.  By the way, this is no more an indictment of the Second Temple Jews than it is of modern American Christians.  I have no doubt but that, if Jesus came today, he would be rejected by the church people of America, just as he was rejected by the Jews.

Before Christ comes in victory, he had to come in defeat.  Before we can experience victory, we must experience defeat.  Such is the human condition based upon our will to sin--the chief sin of which is narcissism.

Was Moses, or the author of Genesis, a prophet?   In Genesis Chapter 3, God tells the serpent:

"I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring;  he will crush your head, but you will bruise his heel."

If the serpent is Satan, which is a belief of Christians, who can defeat Satan (who can crush his head)?  Only another supernatural being, only God.  But, this God is also going to be the offspring of a woman--this God is going to be human as well.  So, the author of Genesis is prophesying that God will take human form and thereby defeat Satan, but that Satan will hurt God (bruise his heel), but not kill him. 

I have never thought of Moses as a prophet, but he, or whoever wrote Genesis, clearly was.