Monday, June 30, 2014

How Can Anyone "Delight in the Fear of the Lord?" - Part 1

Part 1 – Jesus Shows Us

The prophet Isaiah, writing many centuries before the birth of Jesus, declared in just a few verses, the future coming of the Messiah, to fulfill all the hopes and dreams of the Israelite people and God’s covenant with the House of David.

Isaiah not only described the coming fulfillment of their ancient messianic hope, but also painted a quite detailed word picture of the godly character of this Messiah Who would come, along with the basic parameters and broad outline of His Kingdom to follow.

In the first verse, we are shown that the Shoot coming up from the cut-off stump of Jesse and David’s lineage, would be a Branch filled and overflowing with life-giving growth and fruitfulness.

Of course, the Messiah prophesied here by Isaiah, hundreds of years before His time on the earth, finds fulfillment as the Shoot and as the Branch coming out of Jesse, in Jesus of Nazareth, born of not one but two lines of descent from King David, through His mother, Mary, and His earthly father, Joseph.

These both represent the kingly and priestly lines which converge in the Person of Jesus Himself, physically through His mother, Mary, as well as provisionally and positionally through Joseph.

ISAIAH 11:1 There shall come forth a Shoot out of the stump of Jesse [David’s father], and a Branch out of his roots shall grow and bear fruit.                                                                              

Although Isaiah introduces this section by asserting the fulfillment of Israel’s hope in Jesus, he then walks us through a deep and powerful portrayal of His Messianic Personage.

It is this portrayal itself that we will focus in on, in greater depth, as we answer our question of how He could “delight” in the fear of the Lord, and find out how we can, as well!

After describing these exemplary spiritual qualities of the coming Messiah, the prophet then moved on to a sweeping panoramic depiction of the attendant Kingdom of God, that Jesus would fully establish in His own earthly era yet to come, which would eventually grow and overtake all the peoples and nations of the world.

This divine pattern of development and growth, closely parallels Daniel’s interpretation of the dream that so troubled Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar, concerning the unfolding of future events.

The dream itself, and Daniel’s interpretation are depicted vividly in the book of Daniel, chapter 2.

These texts, along with so many other predictive prophecies, help us to fully confirm the identity of prophesied Messiah as Jesus of Nazareth:

DANIEL 2:44 And in the days of these [final ten] kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed, nor shall its sovereignty be left to another people; but it shall break and crush and consume all these kingdoms and it shall stand forever.  45 Just as you saw that the Stone was cut out of the mountain without hands and that it broke in pieces the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver, and the gold, the great God has made known to the king what shall come to pass hereafter. The dream is certain and the interpretation of it is sure.

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