Ha Mashiah: The Hope of Israel

For centuries, from the time of the great prophetic period, when Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and a host of other prophets had foretold the final purposes of God for the Israelite nation and the world as a whole, to the time of the Roman occupation, Israel had longed for its promised Messiah, the Son of David, who they believed would redeem them from all their troubles. The nation longed for its Deliverer and, knowing from prophecies we have already considered in this book that he would be descended from their great king David, named him the Son of David. Yet they chose a more popular title to readily define him, namely the Messiah. By the time of Pontius Pilate, Herod Antipas, and the high priests Annas and Caiaphas, Messianic fervour among the Israelites was at fever pitch. His advent seemed overdue as they yearned for a glorious king who would establish their nation as the dominant nation over the whole earth.

The title Messiah comes from the Hebrew ha Mashiah, meaning "the Anointed One." Mashiah is a common Hebrew word and, in the Hebrew Old Testament, is applied to the anointed high priest (Leviticus 4:3), the nation’s king (2 Samuel 1:14), the prophets of God (Psalm 105:15) and even the Persian king Cyrus (Isaiah 45:1). All of these were anointed by God for some specific ministry or purpose, yet, from the abundance of prophecies of a supreme deliverer to come, who is called mashiah in Daniel 9:25, the people of Israel determined that a supremely anointed figure would arise whom they named the Messiah.

Because the Qur’an acknowledges this title (al-Masih) and applies it exclusively to Jesus Christ eleven times, this subject is a valid and crucial one for Christian witness to Muslims. The Qur’an, as a rule, teaches that all the prophets of God were the same and that Jesus was no more than a prophet, yet here we have a title obviously derived from its Hebrew equivalent, which to the Israelite nation implied so much more. Prophets had come and gone yet one supreme ruler, who would overshadow them all, had been promised in their prophetic writings and they longed for his coming.

The New Testament confirms that Jesus was indeed the Messiah and, while it generally uses the Greek title ho Christos ("the Christ") to describe him, it does on two occasions confirm that this is a translation of the word Messias, the Greek word for Messiah (John 1:41, 4:25). Once again, therefore, we find common ground with Muslims and you have a solid foundation from which to witness to the saving grace of our Saviour Jesus Christ and just what the title Messiah means. In the chapter on the prophecies of Isaiah I quoted a number of prophetic texts you can use in witness on this subject but a few others from other Old Testament prophets are useful as well. Here is one from the prophecy of Zechariah:

Behold the man whose name is the Branch; for he shall grow up in his place, and he shall build the temple of the Lord. It is he who shall build the temple of the Lord, and shall bear royal honour, and shall sit and rule upon his throne. Zechariah 6:12-13

It was texts like these that made the Jews expect a glorious king who would rule over the world from Jerusalem but, as we saw in the chapter on Isaiah, prophecies of his regal glory were interwoven with prophecies of suffering, obscurity and humiliation. The Jews failed to realise that he would come in humility the first time as a suffering servant to become exactly like us and, through his death on the cross, deliver us from our sins. Only at his second coming would he come as the divine ruler of the universe to establish his eternal kingdom and raise his followers to glory, to become as he is in his perfect righteousness. The Jews thought he would deliver the nation from the Romans. Jesus, God’s Messiah, came to deliver all of us from ourselves, as well as from the powers of the world, the flesh and the devil, who pull us down into a state of hostility with God.

It is important, in witnessing to Muslims on the title al-Masih, to show that all the promises made by the earlier prophets had this twofold emphasis, a suffering servant and a glorious king. The people of Israel seem to have conveniently overlooked the first, yet Muslims recognise that Jesus will have two lifetimes on earth, the first when he was God’s servant, born of Mary, and the second when he will return as a ruler of all the earth for forty years. Many Christians also hold the view that Jesus will return to reign over the earth, expecting him to govern it from Jerusalem for a period of a thousand years. In my view both the Muslims and Christians who hold this belief are making the same mistake the Jews made - expecting an earthly king who would rule from an earthly throne. The Bible makes it plain he will usher in an eternal kingdom and that he will rule directly from his Father’s throne in heaven (Revelation 3:21). You need to draw this contrast, otherwise the Messiah of God looks like nothing more than another King David.

The Messiah: Greater Than All the Prophets

In witnessing to Muslims on the identity of the Messiah, this point is crucial before you go into the greater work he was called to perform. He was not just another prophet in a long line of earthly messengers, he was the eternal Saviour, the anointed Messiah, who came down from heaven to reconcile men to God.

John the Baptist is regarded as a prophet in Islam, Yahya alayhis-salaam (John on whom be peace), just like all the other prophets. What is unique about him is that he lived at the same time as Jesus and was able to witness directly to him. This is what he said of him in his Messianic vocation:

You yourselves bear me witness that I said, "I am not the Messiah but I have been sent before him" ... he must increase but I must decrease. John 3:28,30

This is he of whom I said, "After me comes a man who ranks before me, for he was before me." John 1:30

John clearly regarded the Messiah as a representative of God far greater than himself, and in this he was only emulating all the prophets who went before him. As Jesus said, Abraham rejoiced to see his day (John 8:56), Moses foresaw his coming (John 5:46), and David called him his Lord (Matthew 22:45). John the Baptist knew that he had only been sent as a forerunner of the Messiah. As the New Testament says, "he was not the light, but came to bear witness to the light" (John 1:8). Jesus is the light of the world, as he himself said (John 8:12), and everything that was written of him in the law of Moses, the psalms of David, and the writings of the other prophets, had to be fulfilled (Luke 24:44). The Samaritan woman who met Jesus at Jacob’s well near Sychar in Samaria also knew the Messiah would be far greater than all the prophets who preceded him. She said to Jesus:

I know the Messiah is coming, he who is called Christ; when he comes, he will show us all things. John 4:25

To this statement Jesus openly replied, "I who speak to you am he" (John 4:26). You can show Muslims that this question was a direct invitation to Jesus to disclose his true identity - was he just another prophet or was he the long-awaited Messiah, God’s supremely Anointed One?

The key passage here is the question Jesus put to the Jewish leaders gathered before him one day in the Temple. These self-appointed masters of the nation’s religious welfare, both Pharisees and Sadducees, had plied him with many questions, vainly attempting to trap him in his answers. Now Jesus had one for them:

How can they say that the Messiah is David’s son? For David himself says in the book of Psalms, "The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand, till I make your enemies a stool for your feet." David thus calls him Lord; so how is he his son? Luke 20:41-44

Although Jesus was descended from David, and so was his offspring, yet he was also the coming Messiah, and so was his Lord. He was the root of David as well as his offspring (Revelation 22:16) and David knew he would reign over the kingdom of God for ever. This is the implication of the title Messiah, and it is very useful, before you cover the redeeming work of Jesus in witness to Muslims, to first establish his pre-eminence over all the other prophets of God. Then the uniqueness of his salvation through his crucifixion, death and resurrection, gains more meaning and significance.

The Suffering Servant Of God

The Messiah came the first time in relative obscurity. Jesus was a lowly man, living in a small village in Galilee, an insignificant district north of Judea, far from the religious heart of the nation. Most of the Jews missed their Messiah because they missed the prophecies of his first coming and focused only on those to be fulfilled at a much later date, which spoke of his eternal glory and rule. It is important, when witnessing to Muslims, to point to the original prophecy where the word mashiah is used and from which the title Messiah was derived. It contains a plain statement that he would be struck down in the middle of his course:

And after sixty-two weeks, an anointed one shall be cut off, and shall have nothing. Daniel 9:26