Who is this Jesus?

So the Messiah, Son of David, is the one the Jews are still waiting for. What’s really going to happen is the following (as excerpted from Outcast Nation), looking forwards to the day when Jesus, the true Son of David, Mashiach ben David, will make his final appearance.

What an awesome day that will be. God will show His power, stronger than any Cruise or Scud missile, and the whole world is going to realise what a terrible mistake it has made in turning its back on the one true God. The Jewish people will particularly be affected as the truth finally dawns on them. Their reaction to this knowledge will be significant. We read in Zechariah 12:10: ‘And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and supplication. They will look on me, the one they have pierced, and they will mourn for him as one mourns for an only child and grieve bitterly for him as one grieves for a first-born son.’

The awful realisation of the identity of Jesus their Messiah, the ‘one they had pierced’, will initiate a national repentance the like of which the world has never seen before. The next three verses bear testimony to this, speaking of every clan in the land weeping and mourning. Then, perhaps led by their religious leaders, Orthodox and Messianic believers together (though, of course, all will now be ‘Messianic’), will sing the Messianic Psalm, Psalm 118, as Matthew 23:39 tells us, for I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.'” and the Lord Jesus will return. Come, Lord Jesus.

So we have had a brief overview of the Life and Times of Messiah Jesus. It is good to pause now before we leave the subject and apply the principles we learned in earlier articles.

The problem is that the name of Jesus is just the form. Commonly used as a swear word / blasphemy, people don’t realise the function attached to this use, namely Divine sadness (and probably anger too, bearing in mind the third commandment – “do not use my name in vain”). Our problem is that the name “Jesus” does not convey any meaning to us. The Hebrew word Yeshua has the meaning of “salvation”, Jesus’ primary function, but that only strikes home properly with natural Hebrew speakers. If our Bible translators had gone for a translation rather than a transliteration we would be calling him “Salvation”, or, to give him his full title, Salvation, the Anointed One.

But we live in the real world and Hebraic Church has to position itself to be able to communicate to the World at large and not to look inwards. It needs to speak up for a Jewish Jesus, who came primarily as Saviour of the Jews, prophesied from Jewish Scriptures, who lived and taught as a Jew among Jewish people. Some of these Jews followed him, but most didn’t and descendants of both have spent the rest of history being persecuted by the Gentile followers of the same Jewish Saviour. Church history needs to be taught, warts and all, if only to learn from it and not repeat the mistakes.

In terms of how we address this Jewish Saviour, paramount is the need to communicate. Rather than bamboozling other Christians with Sacred Names and even insistence on exclusive use of the name Yeshua, it is surely best to call him by the name history has presented him, Jesus, but to reclaim him by preaching the real Jewish Jesus.

This is an extract from the book, Hebraic Church, available for £10 at https://www.sppublishing.com/hebraic-church-101-p.asp

What is the name of the Messiah?