Jesus is the Messiah

On January 2, 2010, I experienced one of those events that seem to only be portrayed on television, in movies, or in a good novel. It was as if I was taken back in time and saw Jesus recite one of the most important passages of His ministry—the passage that expressed Him as the Messiah.

In Nazareth, there is a replica of a city that exists as if it were in the time of Jesus. Shepherds watch their flocks, tailors sew their blankets, and woodsmen carve their furniture. To walk among these individuals is to walk two thousand years in the past.

In this city, there is a Synagogue. The Synagogue, though a replica, looks exactly like a Jewish Synagogue did in the 1st century C.E. It faces the East, has room to fit the entire city, and contains a middle platform for the rabbis to teach. It was in this Synagogue that the reality of Jesus’ Messiahship became clear to me.

Luke 4:16 says, “And [Jesus] came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up; and as was His custom, He entered the synagogue on the Sabbath, and stood up to read.” Jesus read from Isaiah 61:1-2, which says, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, Because He anointed Me to preach the Gospel to the poor. He has sent Me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed, to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord.”

Our tour guide, Moshe Bronstein, asked if anyone had a Bible open in order to read this passage. I had my Bible in my hand, so I was chosen to perform this honorable task. Moshe had me come into the middle platform and read the passage. Just prior to this, however, Moshe explained the context of the situation.

On the Sabbath, the entire town would flood into the Synagogue. This “church” would be so packed, that sometimes people would crawl onto the roof in order to hear and see what was going on. The rabbi would read from the Scriptures, expounding on them as he felt necessary. On this Sabbath, Jesus, the “guy from next door,” was the One who was asked to read.

As mentioned above, Jesus read from the prophet Isaiah. The passage He read was very powerful, but it was what He said afterwards that really struck a chord. The Scriptures say that after Jesus read the passage, He “closed the book, gave it back to the attendant and sat down” (Luke 4:20). After He read this, every eye in the Synagogue was locked on Jesus. As He looked back at the crowd, He said to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled” (Luke 4:21).

As I finished reading this passage, in this Synagogue, and in this replica city of Nazareth, it was as if Jesus Christ Himself had come in and sat down with us, and the reality of what it meant for Him to be the Messiah slapped me in the face. Jesus was the culmination of what Isaiah, and the rest of the ancients, had been prophesying about.

Since my salvation, I have believed that Jesus is the Messiah, but I never understood what it meant to the Jews. I probably still do not understand it fully, but I do believe that my visualization of Jesus informing His Jewish neighbors of His calling opened my eyes to the importance of His claim. He was the fulfillment of what everyone had been waiting for, the answer to all of their anticipation; the answer to thousands of years of hope.

Today, I encourage everyone to consider what it means for Jesus to be the Messiah.  Earlier, I did a quick image search of "the Messiah" on Google, and the search concluded in a multitude of pictures of our current President. Sadly, we live in an era of “hope and change,” but I fear that our hopes and dreams are being placed into the wrong categories. Jesus is our hope, and change comes only when we give our lives to Him, or more importantly, when He gives His life for us, which He did on the cross.