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Lectio The Case for Jesus: The Kingdom of God and the Messiah
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Who did Jesus claim to be? Who was he? Looking at Jesus’s own words and his fulfillment of two key Old Testament prophecies in the Book of Daniel, Dr. Pitre opens up Jesus’s oft repeated promise to usher in the Kingdom of God.
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Welcome back everyone to our fifth session of the Lectio Bible study on Jesus, where we study the biblical and historical evidence for Christ. Up to this point we've been looking primarily at the Gospels, the origin of the Gospels, the genre of the Gospels, the date of the Gospels, the historicity of the Gospels. And now that we've got established that there are good reasons to believe that the Gospels are ancient biographies of Jesus written by eyewitnesses or companions of the apostles that intend to give us an historical account of what Jesus actually did and said and that they were written within the lifetime, the living memory of the events. Once we've established those historical foundations, we can now take up the question, well, who is Jesus according to these four gospels? What do they say about who he claimed to be? And, and what do we make of that claim? And so the first thing we want to look at when we're answering the question about Jesus identity is the issue of his Messiahship. Was Jesus of Nazareth in fact the Messiah, the anointed one, the long awaited King of Israel? Because someone may at this point object or raise the question, okay, so maybe the four gospels agree that Jesus claimed to be the Messiah. Well, but how do I know that he was the Messiah? I mean, haven't other people claimed to be the Messiah? Didn't other Jews in the first century act as if they were the Messiah? And the answer is, well, yeah, there were some other people. There was a man named Theudas, a man named the Egyptian who performed actions and sayings that made it look as if they were a new Moses or a new Joshua. In the early 2nd century A.D. there was another Jewish figure called Bar Karl, which in Hebrew means son of the star, who actually proclaimed himself to be the Messiah. What's the difference between Jesus of Nazareth and these other claimants to messianic identity? Why do we believe in him but not other so called Messiahs? And the answer to that is so crucial, but it's so often missed, especially if you grew up Christian, if you grew up Catholic. The answer to that is prophecy. Remember how I mentioned earlier in one of the sessions, I asked my students, you know, how many of you believe Jesus is the Messiah? And every hand went up. And I said, how many of you believe Jesus fulfilled the prophecies of the Messiah? And every hand went up. And then I said, which prophecies? And it was what? Silence. Right? And maybe one bright student would say, oh well, the suffering servant. I would say, good. Now where is that? In Isaiah somewhere. Okay, Isaiah 53, right? That's a very famous one, but it's not the main one, although it was one of the primary ones that many Christians, Jewish Christians especially, were using to show Jesus as the actual Messiah. There's another passage that's even more foundational because before you get to Jesus Passion, you actually have to establish that he was the one who brought the kingdom of God. Like so if you think about his public ministry, Jesus talks about his Passion on a few occasions privately with the disciples. But what's the one thing he's talking about over and over and over and over again in Matthew and Mark and Luke and even in John? The kingdom, the kingdom, the kingdom of God. Right. So what I want to do in this session is look both at the Passion I want to take. We'll end with that, but, but I want to start with the prophecy of the kingdom of God. Okay. So if you know anything about the Gospels or if you just open your gospel of Mark 1:14, 15, you'll see that the kingdom of God is very central to Jesus message and ministry. So in Mark 1:14, this is how Mark's Gospel describes the beginning of Jesus ministry. Now, after John, meaning John the Baptist was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee preaching the Gospel of God and saying the time is fulfilled and the what is at hand. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the gospel. So this is the first thing out of Jesus mouth. The time is fulfilled and the kingdom is at hand. That's the good news. Now I don't know about you, but I grew up if I heard the expression the kingdom of God or the kingdom of heaven, I kind of thought it was just another way of talking about the place I go when I die. Hopefully. Right. In other words, heaven as the afterlife. The kingdom of heaven, the heavenly realm where God and the saints and the blessed virgin and the angels are. And that's true, that's not incorrect. But to a first century Jew hearing Jesus come on the scene and preaching about the kingdom of God, that wouldn't be the primary meaning that they would give to it because they would link it with prophecies of the kingdom of God from the Old Testament and in particular with one prophecy, and that's from the Book of Daniel, chapter two, two. Because one of the curious things about Jesus preaching about the kingdom of God is that although he talks about it all the time, it isn't actually discussed very much at all. In the Old Testament there are only a few passages that even use the expression kingdom of God, much less prophecies that talk about it, but there is one major prophecy of the kingdom of God in, and it's in the book of Daniel and it's in Daniel chapter two. So in order to flesh this out, we actually have to go back to Daniel chapter two. We need to read it. And I'm actually going to use an image here to help you see the prophecy. And one of the things that's fascinating about this prophecy is that it doesn't just tell that the kingdom of God is going to come or what the kingdom of God is, but it tells when it will come. Alright, you ready? Okay, so let's read the prophecy together and we will then try to unpack it. The Kingdom of God in the Book of Daniel. Now, the story here, just to give you a little bit of background, is about Daniel, who was a Jew at the time of the destruction of the first temple in Jerusalem in 587 B.C. and like many of the other Jews, he was taken into exile in Babylon. And. And in this case, he was made a servant of the Babylonian king. He was one of the king's counselors and wise men. He would have these different wise men who would advise him and whatnot. And Daniel was among the Jewish exiles. And the king had this terrible dream, a really bad nightmare. And he tried to get all of his standard Babylonian advisors to illuminate him as to the meaning of the dream. But because he was suspicious of them, he threw a little curve ball. He said, I don't just want you to interpret my dream. I want you to tell me what the dream was first, without me telling you. And if you don't, I'll kill you and all of your families. Isn't that nice? Okay. This is how kings were in the ancient world. So of course none of them could do it because they said only God could do something like that. Only a God or one of the gods. And so they were going to execute them. But Daniel, one of the Jewish exiles, says, I know a God, right? The God of Israel who knows all things. And he can tell the king not just the meaning of his dream, but the dream itself. So this is Daniel goes before the king of Babylon and he gives the dream. And here it is. All right, you ready? Daniel said to King Nebuchadnezzar, you saw, O king, and behold a great image, meaning a great statue. The head of the image was of fine gold, its breast and its arms of silver, its belly and thighs of bronze, its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of clay. Now, as you looked, a stone was cut by no human hand. And it smote the image on its feet of iron and clay, and it broke them in pieces. And then the iron, the clay, the bronze, and the silver and the gold all together were broken in pieces and became like the chaff of the summer threshing floors. These are the little hulls of wheat. When they would thresh out the wheat and the wind would just blow them away, the wind carried them away so that not a trace of them could be found. But the stone that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth. That's Daniel 2:31,35. Now, this is a strange dream. The king had this image of this terrifying statue made of these different metals. Gold, then silver, then bronze, then iron. And then little rock comes and it hits the base of the statue, destroys the whole thing. And then something really weird happens. That little stone turns into a giant mountain that fills the whole world. Now, I'm no geologist or anything, but mountains might turn into little stones, but little stones don't turn into giant mountains. Okay, so something supernatural is going on in this dream. This is a strange dream. If you want to find the interpretation of the dream, Daniel gives it in Daniel Chapter two in the subsequent verses. So let's just go there for a second. It's kind of a long passage, but it's very important for understanding what is the meaning of this mysterious dream. So if you look at Daniel, chapter two, verse 36, down to 45, this is it, everyone. This is the passage, the one prophecy that uses that expression, the kingdom of God. Listen to what Daniel says. This was the dream. Now we will tell the king its interpretation. You, O king, the king of kings, to whom the God of heaven has given the kingdom, the power, the might and the glory, and into whose hand he is given, wherever they dwell, the sons of men, the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, making you rule over them all. You, Nebuchadnezzar, are the head of gold. After you shall arise another kingdom inferior to you, and then yet a third kingdom of bronze, which shall rule over all the earth. Then there shall be a fourth kingdom, strong as iron, because iron breaks to pieces and shatters all things. And like iron which crushes, it shall break and crush all these. And as you saw the feet and the toes, partly of potter's clay and partly of iron, it shall be a divided kingdom, that fourth kingdom. But some of the firmness of iron shall be in it. Just as you saw iron mixed with clay, and as the toes of the feet were partly iron, and partly clay. So the kingdom shall be partly strong and partly brittle. As you saw the iron mixed with miry clay. So they will mix with one another in marriage, but they will not hold together, just as iron does not mix with clay. And in the days of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed, nor shall its sovereignty be left to another people. It shall break in pieces all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, but it shall stand forever. Just as you saw that a stone was cut from a mountain by no human hand and that it broke in pieces the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver and the gold, a great God has made known to the king what shall be hereafter. The dream is certain and its interpretation sure. All right, so if you look at the image here that I put together for you, what the king is seeing is a statue made of four different medals. And Daniel is saying that the first medal, the golden head, represents the Babylonian empire, the kingdom of Babylon, of which Nebuchadnezzar himself is the head. But then it's going to be followed by a second empire, which is the Medo Persian empire. And we know from history, after Babylon fell, the Medes and Persians gathered together and formed their own empire, right? And Daniel says that's the silver part of this statue. But then after the silver comes the belly and thighs made of bronze, which represents a third kingdom. Well, what kingdom is this? It's the Greeks. Think of Alexander the Great, right, who conquered the known world with unbelievable speed, Right? That's the third kingdom after Babylon. And then finally Daniel says there's going to be a fourth kingdom represented by the iron and the clay, legs and feet. And he says, like iron, it's going to be a very strong kingdom. But like trying to mix iron with clay, the various peoples that make up this kingdom aren't going to, what, mesh? They're not going to stick together. And it's at the time of that fourth kingdom, which, what kingdom came after the Greek empire? It was the Roman Empire. At the time of that fourth empire, God is going to set up a kingdom. And unlike the Babylonians and the Medo Persians and the Greek kingdom and the kingdom of Rome, unlike those kingdoms, this kingdom will last forever. And unlike those that are depicted as a statue, like an idol, this will be a little rock, little stone cut by no human hand, and it's going to strike the fourth kingdom, Rome, bring it down, and then that little stone will become a great mountain and fill the whole earth with the kingdom of God. Now there's so many things I could tell you about this that are interesting. One of them, I'll just say it and squeeze it in here. What Daniel means here, he's talking about empires, right? Babylonian empire, Medo, Persian empire, Greek empire, Roman Empire. So what is the Kingdom of God? It's the empire of God. You see, it's a kingdom that rules over other kingdoms. It's a kingdom that has dominion and power and glory. Now if you grew up in the 80s like I did, you think of the empire, you think of Star wars, right? And empires are bad, which is generally true. But when it's God's empire, see, it's different. And empires spread. They want to. They're not interested in just being ruling over one part of the world. They want to rule everything. And the same thing's true of the Kingdom of God. It's universal. You might even say, all right, okay, so why does any of this matter? Well, if you know your history, any first century Jew would have known that the first empire in Daniel's vision was a Babylonian, which was in the 6th century BC. Okay. And any Jew would have known that after them, the Medo Persian empire was in the fifth century B.C. and then followed by the Greek Empire in the fourth, fourth century B.C. and then in the first century B.C. the Romans came and they conquered. And so what would a first century Jew have understood in the first century AD about this prophecy that they were living in the time of the fourth kingdom, Right? So sometime according to Daniel, during that fourth kingdom, the Roman Empire, the kingdom is going to come. Now put yourself on the shores of the Jordan river, hearing John the Baptist, and then you see him point to this Jesus of Nazareth. You go to Galilee and Jesus begins to preach. And Jesus steps onto the stage and what does he say? Read it again. The time is fulfilled. The kingdom is at hand. Repent and believe in the gospel. What would you hear as a first century Jew? You hear him saying, Daniel's prophecy is being fulfilled. The time is now. The time is at hand for that little stone to come and set up a new kingdom that will never be destroyed and that will spread throughout the entire earth. And that kingdom is the Kingdom of God. You see, they wouldn't have thought of it as just like the afterlife. Does that make sense? You see the difference? Okay, because the kingdom of God in Daniel comes from heaven. It is heavenly. But where does it start to spread? It starts to spread on earth. Everybody with me? Good. Okay, interesting too. It starts out small like a stone, but it gets real Big. I'm trying to think of an analogy. It might be like a mustard seed just making this up. It's like a mustard seed. It's the smallest of seeds, but then it becomes a great tree and all the birds of the air come to dwell in it. You see that? Sound familiar? Okay, good. All right. So that's how Jesus is teaching. You see, it would have resonated with his audience, but for us. What's so powerful about this image? Two things. First, Daniel doesn't just say that the kingdom's going to come. He tells you when it's going to happen. During the time of the Roman Empire. That's why so many Jews were on fire in the first century AD with Messianic expectation. Because they knew they were living in the time of the fourth kingdom, right? The time was now who's going to be the person, who's going to be the God? Secondly, as a Catholic, I just have to throw this out here. Notice where does this kingdom start? From the kingdom of God. It strikes the base of the statue, which is the fourth kingdom of iron and clay is the Roman Empire. Have you ever wondered why it's the Roman Catholic Church? Like, why do Peter and Paul beeline it to Rome to bring the gospel there? Well, you could say, well, practically they wanted the gospel to spread from Rome to the end of the earth. You win the capital, you win the empire. And that's true. But I can't help but wonder if they also are thinking about Daniel, right? That that little stone strikes in the heart of the Roman Empire and from there it spreads throughout the whole world like a universal kingdom. You know what a Greek word for universal is? Catholicos. Alright, we get the word Catholic from there. Everybody with me, okay? That's what Jesus is preaching and that's why everyone's so excited when he begins to bring this message. Now you might say, okay, well hold on, Dr. Petrie, that's fascinating, it's really interesting. But you know, there were other Jews who claimed to be the Messiah, made messianic actions in the first century. So they were doing at the time of the Roman Empire too. What's different between them and Jesus? And I would say that one of the differences, and we'll come back to this when we look at his passion, revolves around not just the timing of the kingdom, but the timing of Jesus. Death, death and the destruction of the temple. So there's a second prophecy from Daniel that I would like you to read. It's in Daniel, chapter nine, verse 24 to 27. And this one's a little. It's a little harder. I'm going to be honest with you. It's a little tougher than the prophecy of the statue made of the four metals. It's a very obscure text, but it's one that was really important in the early church for demonstrating that Jesus fit the timeline of the Messiah with his death and with the destruction of the temple. Okay, so Daniel, 9, 24, 27. Again, the context here is that Daniel is praying. He's a devout Jew, and guess who comes to him and gives him a vision here? An angel of God at the time of the evening prayer. And who's that angel's name? Does anybody know Gabriel? Have we seen this Gabriel before? Anywhere else? Does Gabriel do anything else significant with regard to the coming of the Messiah? Yeah, he's the angel who announces the annunciation. Proclaims the annunciation in Luke Chapter one. Okay, so very significant figure. Only three angels get named in the Old Testament. Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael. Right. And Tobit. So he's a very significant figure. So Gabriel the angel brings this prophecy of the timing of the coming of the Messiah. Not just the coming, but of the death of the Messiah. So listen to the prophecy. 9:24. In Daniel, 70 weeks of years are decreed concerning your people and your holy city. So this is Gabriel speaking to Daniel, which, by the way, 77. So 70 weeks of years is 490 years. That's just what it would mean in Hebrew. So 70 weeks of years are decreed concerning your people and your holy city to finish the transgression, to put an end to sin, to atone for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness. That sound pretty good. To seal both vision and prophet, and to anoint a most holy place, like a new temple or a most holy one. You could actually translate it as an anointed person. It's either way. Know, therefore, and understand. Gabriel says that from the going forth of the word to restore and build Jerusalem to the coming of an anointed one. And the Hebrew word there is Mashiach, from which we get the English word Messiah. Right. To the coming of Messiah, a prince. There will be seven weeks. Then for 62 weeks, it shall be built again with squares and a moat. But in a troubled time, after the 62 weeks, an anointed one, a mashiach, shall be cut off, which is a Hebrew expression for what? Being killed. Okay. If you cut someone off, you kill them. An anointed one shall be cut off and shall have nothing. The people of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. What city is that? Jerusalem. What sanctuary is that? The Temple. Right. Its end shall come with a flood to the end there shall be war. Desolations are decreed. He shall make a strong covenant with many for one week, and for half the week he shall cause sacrifice and offering to cease. Upon the wings of abomination shall come one who makes desolate until the decreed end is poured out on the desolator. So, see, it's all clear. Right? No, I'm just teasing. This is a very cryptic prophecy. There's a lot of numbers and things going on in here. If you want to dive in a little more deeply, I wrote a book with Dr. John Bergman called A Catholic Introduction of the Bible and the Old Testament. And there's a whole chapter there in Daniel where We'll walk you through that in a little more detail. We don't have the time to do it right now for our purposes. Right now I just want you to focus on four main elements, and I cover these again in the case for Jesus. There's a chart in there kind of breaking down the timeline that Daniel is giving here. And the four main elements are this. Daniel is prophesying the timing of the death of the Messiah. And what he says is, number one, that there's going to be these 70 weeks of years from the going forth of the Word to restore and rebuild Jerusalem. Now, when did that happen? Remember I said that Jerusalem was destroyed around 587 BC by the Babylonians? Well, in around 457 B.C. the King of Persia, King Artaxerxes, made a decree to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem. Right. So around 457 B.C. second Daniel says there will be 70 sevens of years or 70 weeks of years. So 70 times 7 equals how many years? 490. Which, by the way, you know this already, that this is an important number, because remember in the Gospels when Peter says, my brother sins against me, how many times should I forgive him? And Jesus, he says as much as seven times. Peter thinks he's being magnanimous. I'll forgive even seven. And Jesus says, no, 70 times seven times. So forgive him 490 times. Now, why does Jesus pick that number? Well, you could just say, oh, he's showing that there's a kind of infinite amount of forgiveness, that we have to just forgive and forgive and forgive. But there's more to it, because 490 was a multiple of seven, which was the number of the covenant. But he's also alluding to a prophecy here, because what Daniel said is after the 77, the 490 years, God is going to come and forgive the sins of his people. He's going to atone for transgressions, right? He's going to inaugurate a great jubilee, the final jubilee, where debts will be forgiven, sins will be forgiven and righteousness will be brought in at the end of these 490 years. And during that period, Daniel says two things that are really important. First, not only will the Messiah come, but he's going to be killed. And second, the temple and the city will be destroyed. Okay, now what's so fascinating about that, if you look at the chart here, is if you do just basic math, and again, these aren't precise because there's always debates about exactly when Jesus died and all that. But, but roughly speaking, from the 5th century BC around 457. 490 years later would put you right around 33 AD in the 30s of the 1st century. Anything significant happen? 33. Yeah. The Messiah is what cut off. And what happens within one generation of that? The temple's destroyed and the cities burned to the ground by the Romans. Is this just a coincidence? Daniel has written hundreds of years before Jesus ever came onto the scene. How do we explain this correspondence, this correlation of events? I'll tell you how the early Jewish Christians explained it. I said this is proof. This is proof from prophecy that Jesus not only claimed to be the Messiah, he not only claimed to be the one bringing the kingdom, but he fulfilled it. He was the one and anyone who claims after him, like once you get into the second century, like Bar Kokhba, who's around 135, once you get into the third century, or maybe even into the 21st century, guess what? It's too late to fulfill the four hundred and ninety years of Daniel's prophecy. You got about five centuries between the restoring of the temple after Babylon by Persia and the coming of the Messiah. Once the Roman Empire is gone, Daniel's prophecy, you can't fulfill it anymore, Right? So who is the one candidate in human history who doesn't just make the claim, but fits the timeline, and that is Jesus of Nazareth. And the first Christians, who were Jewish Christians, knew it. And now you know what Jesus means when he says the time is fulfilled. What time? Daniel's time. The timeline for the coming of the Messiah. Because listen, my brothers and sisters, Jesus is the only founder of a world religion who was ever pre announced. Have you thought about this? There are no prophecies of Buddha, there are no Prophecies of Muhammad, Right. There are no prophecies of the countless people who claim to be some kind of deliverer or messiah that have cropped up over and over again throughout history. But Jesus of Nazareth was preannounced and that shows us that Christianity is not just a man made religion. Surely humans are involved. Without a doubt. But Christianity isn't just a man made religion. It's a God made religion. Right? It's divinely revealed. And Judaism of course too, because Judaism lays the groundwork. The Old Testament is the divine revelation that prepares for the coming of the Messiah. Who would fulfill these prophecies? And too often today modern Christians just forget about prophecy. We just start with the Gospels and we never look at the Old Testament. And we wonder why people think Jesus is just one more religious leader, one more moral teacher, one more great philosopher or messianic claimant. Well, it's because we've forgotten how to give people the reasons from prophecy. Because in the ancient world this is one of the reasons Christianity spread by wildfire. Because it said it isn't just my opinion. You can look at the scriptures, the Jewish scriptures themselves and see that Jesus fulfilled not just this one, but other prophecies as well. Like Isaiah 53 and the suffering, sir. But you don't have to take my word for it. I'll close listen to the words of Josephus and an ancient Christian writer named Eusebius. We've mentioned before Josephus, listen to what he says about Daniel. Quote, we are convinced that Daniel spoke with God, for he did not only prophesy future events as did the other prophets, but but he also determined what the time at which these events would come to pass. So see, even though Josephus himself wasn't a Christian, he admitted Daniel gave us a timeline for the coming of the Messiah. And then again eusebius in the 4th century AD Ancient Christian writer, when he is talking about the reasons for believing in the Gospel, what does he say? Quote, we must count the numbers, that is to say the 70 what weeks which are 490 years from the going forth of the word of answer and from the building of Jerusalem. This took place in the 20th year of Artaxerxes, King of Persia. And from that date to the coming of the Christ or to the coming of Christ is what? 70 weeks. And then finally, because if you know me, you know I'm mathematically challenged. Pascal, very famous philosopher and mathematician. You can trust his math, right? You can trust Pascal's math. What does Pascal and his Penses say? One must be bold to predict the same thing in so many ways. It was necessary that the four idolatrous or pagan monarchies, the end of the kingdom of Judah and the 70 weeks, should happen at the same time. And all this before the second temple was what? Destroyed. See, this used to be common knowledge among Christians in Europe, like Pascal, that Jesus didn't just claim to be the Messiah, but that he fulfilled the prophecies. But in modern times, we've forgotten it. We've forgotten it because we're not paying enough attention to the Old Testament. And I would suggest to you, my brothers and sisters, that if we're going to share our faith in our day and time in a secular world, in the new evangelization, we need to go back to one of the main motives of credibility for believing that Jesus of Nazareth was who he claimed to be. And that's the argument from prophecy. All right, when we come back for the next session, we're going to ask another question. Okay, maybe Jesus was the Messiah, but that doesn't necessarily mean he was God, right? I mean, the Messiah was just the King of Israel. David was called the Messiah. The next session we'll look. Did Jesus claim to be God? See you then.