Is Jesus God? The Prophecies of the Coming King Explained

Welcome to Through the Bible with Les Feldick, a 30-minute walk through the Scriptures, teaching in-depth Bible truths that change people's lives. Now, here's your host, Les Feldick. Good evening, and it's again good to have everybody with us, and we're going to pick right up where we left off last week, and we're going to continue on up through the Old Testament. So, if you remember correctly, we were in Psalms when we closed our last program. Now we're going to go on up to Isaiah, and remember we're looking at the Abrahamic Covenant, and for viewers who may be tuning in for the first time, we're on a trek through the Scriptures from Genesis, we hope, the Lord carries to go all the way to Revelation. But whatever, we are presently in the Abrahamic Covenant of Genesis chapter 12, which is divided dormantly. They don't all come out at once into the promise of a nation, the promise of the land, and now we are in the process of looking at that third part, the promise of a government or a king who will, of course, be the Son of God. So, in Isaiah chapter 9, we'll pick up that run of references in verse 6, a verse that's always well known, especially at Christmastime, but it's a prophetic utterance given to the nation of Israel. Now, I'm certainly not the first and not the only and not the last Bible teacher that will emphasize that as you read or study your Bible, always determine to whom was a particular portion addressed. Now, of course, it's very evident that most of your Old Testament is addressed to the nation of Israel. Well, Isaiah the prophet is addressing the nation, and as such he says in verse 6, "...for unto us," the nation of Israel, "...a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the..." What's the next word? "...government," see, "...and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called." Now, watch these because they're all capitalized. These are all terms that are associated with this coming King, the Messiah, the Son of God, whom we will be introduced into the New Testament as Jesus the Christ. These are all appropriately His terms of deity. "...his name shall be called Wonderful, Consular, the Mighty," what? "...God." Now, here again, how many theologians aren't trying to tell us that Jesus never claimed to be God, that He was not deity, that He was not the preexistent Creator God? But He is, and He was, and He always will be. So, "...he shall be called the Mighty God." The next one, and I have to remind my classes of the last couple, three years, you know, I didn't see this next part until just a few years ago. Now, I've always taught from John 14 when Jesus told Philip, "...Philip, hath thou not known me? If you've seen me, you've seen the Father." But here Isaiah says the same thing, and I never caught it, and I was teaching one night and it just sort of hit me. How did I skim over this for years and not see it? Well, you see, this is the beauty of the Scriptures. It is just like an artesian well. It never runs dry, and every time you read it, every time you study it, you're going to see something you never saw before. And here it is, "...one of his names shall be the Everlasting Father." See, capitalized. If you've seen me, you've seen the Father. And then the next one is, "...the Prince of Peace." Now, you know, the Psalms instructs us to pray for the peace of Jerusalem. You knew that, because after all, that's what Jerusalem means, the city of peace. But it hasn't been a city of peace for thousands of years, and it isn't yet tonight. But we're to pray for the peace of Jerusalem. You know why? Because Jerusalem will know no peace until the Prince of Peace has returned. And so, when you pray for the peace of Jerusalem, you are actually praying for the return of Christ, and that's very appropriate. All right, now then, verse 7, "...of the increase of his government," this king that's going to come in fruition of the Abrahamic covenant, "...the increase of his government and peace." See, it's going to be a government without corruption, without any turmoil, without war. It's going to be a perfect, righteous, peaceful government. And on that peace, there shall be no end. And where is he going to rule? Upon the throne of David. Now, do you remember what we read last week in 2 Samuel chapter 7, that his throne and his family would be a continuing one all the way into eternity? Here it comes now. See how beautifully Scripture falls in place, "...and his rule shall be upon the throne of David, and upon his," what's the next word, "...kingdom, to order it, to establish it with judgment," that is, with rule, "...and with justice, from henceforth even forever. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this." It's going to be the almighty, eternal, infinite God that is going to bring it all about. This king that is coming, who came and was rejected, but is coming again. Now then, let's go on to Jeremiah. Like I said, we're just going to come right on up through the Old Testament. Come to Jeremiah chapter 23. And as I said last week, we're not exhausting all these references, not by any means. We're just picking out the ones that are easiest to understand, and the ones that are most appropriate for this kind of a study. Jeremiah 23, drop down to verse 5, Jeremiah 23, verse 5, "...Behold, the days come, saith the Lord," and remember the word L-O -R-D in capital letters is always Jehovah, "...Behold, the days come, saith Jehovah, that I will raise unto David," see, it goes back to King David again, "...I will raise unto David a righteous branch," now that word branch is what? Capitalized. So, again, it's a title. It's a name concerning deity, "...and a righteous branch, and a king," capitalized, "...and a king shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judgment and justice," not in heaven, where? In the earth. Now, you see how plainly all this comes through? This is the promised kingdom that's also going to go right on into eternity, but where is it? On the earth, and so few people have any concept of that. They just think of heaven as someplace way out there. Well, yes, the throne room of God tonight, the very paradise that we think of as heaven, yes, it's up someplace. But the heaven that you and I are pointing to, the heaven that you and I are going to be intrinsically involved in if we're a believer tonight, is going to be on this earth. Christ is going to rule and reign upon the earth from the city of Jerusalem, the city of peace. Now, I'll read on, verse 6, "...in his days," in other words, the days when Christ will be ruling from Jerusalem, "...in his days Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell safely, and this is his name whereby he shall be called the Lord our Righteousness." Now, I think in most of the translations, the words, the Lord our Righteousness, are also capitalized. Are they not? No? Oh, all right. In some of them, they're all, some not and some want. Now, in the Hebrew, this is Jehovah Sidcanu, and that's spelled T-S-I-D-K -E-N-U. And it just simply translated means, the Lord is our Righteousness. But originally, it's Jehovah Sidcanu. Now, I like that because, you remember, we pointed it out back in Genesis chapter 2, and we'll really get into it when we get to Exodus chapter 3, how that the very name of Jehovah derives from the I Am, and you're all acquainted with that, I Am that I Am. Now then, this very title of this coming king is the I Am. Oh, the almighty I Am of creation is going to be the Lord of Righteousness. He'll be the same God. There'll be no sin. There'll be no corruption. It will be a perfect government. And oh, how the world longs for that tonight. I like to always remind my classes of something I've read, and maybe some of you have known it for years. Power corrupts. Absolute power what? Absolutely. And isn't that true? Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Now, all you have to do is go back down through history, and hasn't that always been true? Whenever a king or an emperor gets absolute power, he ends up with the most corrupt government on earth. And the same way even within our democracy. You get an individual who is corrupt, it isn't long until he is corrupt absolutely. It's just human nature. That's not going to be the case here. It's going to be a kingdom of righteousness. But now read on. Verse 7. Therefore, behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that they shall no more say, The Lord liveth with brought up the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt. But the Lord liveth. Now this is being fulfilled right before our very eyes. We alluded to these verses several months ago. As the Jews are coming back to the land now from Russia, Albania, the last Jerusalem post I read, there are only 100 or 200 Jews left in Albania. They have all emigrated back to Israel. A few weeks ago, you just saw 14 or 15,000 Ethiopian Jews airlifted from Addis Ababa to Israel in 33 hours. Now, the average American never got that. 33 hours, the Israeli Air Force airlifted 14 ,000 Jews, and we're going to read the verse that just explains it explicitly, because even as they were airlifting, there were several babies born, naturally. That always happens, but the Scripture says it would. But let's read on. The Lord liveth who brought up and which led the seed of the house of Israel out of the north country. Now, that's Russia, so far as we're concerned. Russia is due north of Jerusalem. And from all the countries whither ... what's the next pronoun? I had driven them. Why did the Jew end up outside of his promised land for the last couple thousand years? Not because they left voluntarily. God took them out. And again, it was a disciplinary thing. Why did he have to take them out of the land? Because they rejected everything that was offered at his first coming. They crucified him. And so, they did not repent of that. After the 40 years of the Book of Acts, finally God's patience ran out, he'd let the temple be destroyed by Titus, and the Jew was dispersed into the nations of the world by a sovereign act of God. The land was left empty to be taken over by anyone that would, but now you see God is ready to bring his people back, and the usurpers are going to have to be moved out. Now, they don't like that, but it's still a fact of Scripture, and God is sovereign. I'll read on. And they shall dwell ... where? In their own land. The very land that God promised way back there in chapter 15 of Genesis. And here we're seeing it come to pass now, what, 2,000 and 2,000, almost 4,000 years later, the word of Genesis is coming true. Go on over to Jeremiah 31. I guess this is the verse I was just alluding to. I didn't know what it was or not, but it is. Jeremiah 31. And even though it's a repetition, always remember that the Scripture has the same rule of thumb that we do in our everyday conversation. If you want to emphasize something to someone, what do you do? You repeat it. And that's what Scripture does. And so, I always tell people, whenever you see something repeated two or three times within a book or within a chapter, take notice, because God is making an emphatic point. And here is a good one. Verse 8. Behold, I will bring them from the north country ... Now, this is the third time that that is spoken in the book of Jeremiah. ... I will bring them from the north country, and gather them from the borders of the earth. And with them the blind, the lame, the woman with child, and her that travaileth with child together, a great company shall return thither. Part of that just took place a few weeks ago, but the end isn't yet. They're going to keep coming in from the four corners of the world. Where they're going to put them all, nobody knows. It's one of the biggest headaches for the Israeli government, how to assimilate all of these Jews. And remember, most of them can't speak the Hebrew language. The Russian Jews are having a hard time amalgamating because of the language barrier. So the first thing the Israeli government does is puts all these people into a language school so that they can function within the society. And it's mind-boggling to find apartments for them. Many of these families are living two and three in a little small apartment, and the economy has to absorb them. Now, how do you suppose the native Israelis feel about their job security? Because you want to remember, many of these Jews, especially coming from Russia, are highly educated. Israel tonight now has the lowest per capita of people per doctor of any nation on earth because so many of these Russian Jews are M.D.'s, and they're scientists, they're engineers. But always stop and think that behind it all is the sovereign God. Otherwise, it would be an impossible task. All right, let's go on to still another one, Zechariah. Zechariah, which is the next to the last book in your Old Testament. Zechariah. Let's go to chapter 14. Zechariah chapter 14. And let's just take a glimpse of the whole chapter. Now, I don't like to treat the Word of God lightly. That's not the idea. But for sake of time, and I trust that you'll go back when you get home and sometime in the next few days, read all of these verses carefully. But just for sake of time, let's just kind of skim the chapter until we get down to the verse that deals with the king. Beginning with verse 1. Behold, the day of the Lord cometh, in other words, His return, His second coming. And thy spoils shall be divided in the midst of thee. Now remember, Zechariah, just like Isaiah, is writing to what people? To Israel. He's writing to the Jew. Verse 2. God says, I will gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle. That's, of course, Armageddon as we know it from the book of Revelation. And the city shall be taken, the houses rifled, the women ravished, and half the city shall go forth into captivity, will be overrun, and the residue of the people shall not be cut off from the city. But in other words, when it looks like there's no hope for the Jews in the area of Jerusalem and Judea because of all these multitudes of Gentile armies surrounding them. Now we got just a preview of that in the desert storm. That's all it was. It was not Armageddon. It wasn't even close to it. But it was a pretty good preview of how quickly the nations of the world can bring their armies to the Middle East. And it's going to happen in a full scale someday. We don't know when. But this is what the Scripture is referring to. For I will gather all nations against Jerusalem. Verse 3, and then shall the Lord go forth and fight against those nations as when He fought in the day of battle. In other words, back in Israel's history. How many times then God undertake on behalf of the little nation against her mortal enemies. And then verse 4, and His feet shall stand in that day, the day of His second coming. Where? On the Mount of Olives. Now if you'll flash ahead in your memory to the book of Acts, you remember on the time of His ascension, what did the angel say? Why ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus, as you have seen go, in like manner shall what? Come again. In other words, He left from the Mount of Olives, standing on His two feet, and He went up. He's going to come back to the Mount of Olives the same way He left. He's going to come down and stand on two feet. That's the literal, physical second coming of Christ as we see it even here in Zechariah. All right, let's read on. He shall stand in that day upon the Mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the east. So don't spiritualize it and say, well, there must be a mountain in heaven by that name. No, it's the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. And then He goes on and He expresses some of the other things that are going to take place, but now flip down to verse 9. Down to verse 9, and the Lord, Jehovah, and remember Jehovah, the Old Testament, is Christ in the New. And the Lord shall be, what's the word, King, not over heaven, but over what? All the earth. Isn't that plain English? There's no way you can follow that up. The Lord, Jehovah, the Christ, shall be King over all the earth. And in that day there shall be one Lord, and His name one. And again He goes on and describes some of the other details, but now if you'll just skip a few more verses and come with me to verse 16. And it shall come to pass, now of course all of these things are going to come one right after the other. He's going to come down to the Mount of Olives, He'll be setting up His kingdom, and everything is going to start moving forward. Then verse 16, and it shall come to pass that everyone that is left of all the nations, plural, that came against Jerusalem, in other words all the nations of the world, there are going to be survivors. And amongst those survivors, now someday way down the road we'll be getting into prophecy, and as we do in all our classes, we'll just show you particularly from the Scripture who are the survivors that will go into this earthly kingdom. Now I'm not talking about us, because we're going to be translated before all this takes place. We're going to come back in resurrected bodies, we're not going to be flesh and blood as we know it, procreating, marrying, and so forth. But there will be people who are going to be in that category. They will be flesh and blood, they will be partakers of the earthly kingdom. And so it says, of those who have survived, that is, the awful events of the tribulation, the battle of Armageddon, and so forth, and are believers, and they go into the kingdom. And we won't take time to look the verse up now, we'll run across it some other time. But do you remember in John's Gospel, chapter 3, as Jesus was approached by Nicodemus, what did Jesus tell him? Except a man be born again, he cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. Now there's that word kingdom, but it's the same kingdom. The kingdom is the kingdom of the king. It's this kingdom that's coming upon the earth. No unbeliever will go into that kingdom, flesh and blood or otherwise. And so here we have the survivors of all the terrible events of the tribulation. They've survived even the battle of Armageddon, and now the surviving people of all these nations are going to come, verse 16, reading on, they're going to come up from year to year to the city of Jerusalem, for what purpose? To worship the King, see, capitalized, to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, and if they don't, then of course they'll have no reign in their homeland. Now whenever I see these stipulations, I always have to think of other times in the past when God dealt under sort of circumstances. For example, when Israel was given the opportunity to leave Egypt, did any of them stay behind? No, not that we know of. They all came out. Now had they stayed behind, it would have been their lot. Why? Nothing. And so all the way up through Scripture we have these kinds of settings where you have that opportunity, but it just doesn't happen. And so I don't think that there's going to be any problem in the millennium with people not being obedient enough to come and worship the King as is stipulated. Well anyway, there you see very plainly that when the Lord returns, He's going to set up His kingdom here upon the earth. Now let's move quickly, if you will, into the New Testament. I don't know if we're going to have time to finish all these yet or not in this half hour, but if not, we'll just pick up in the next one. But if you'll go to Matthew chapter 1, now for any of you that have had any Bible teaching at all, I think you realize that Matthew is one of the four Gospels that depicts Christ as the King. Mark of course depicts Him as the servant, John depicts Him as the Son of God, Luke depicts Him as the Son of Man, but Matthew depicts Him as the King. Now in order to be a king, what do you have to have? A genealogy, because a king assumes a royal throne by virtue of the royal family. Matthew chapter 1, verse 1, the book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham, and then what? Period. Now Abraham isn't the beginning of the human race, but that's where this genealogy stops. Why? Because you see, His becoming the King is based upon that promise made to Abraham, not to anybody ahead of Him. And so this genealogy will only go back as far as Abraham. I've only got a minute left, so turn over quickly to Luke's Gospel chapter 3. We're going to have to cheat on time a little bit, and maybe we'll pick it up again the next half hour to clarify. But in Luke's Gospel chapter 3, we have the genealogy of what most people think is Mary, whereas in Matthew it's the genealogy of Joseph. But in Luke chapter 3, the genealogy of Mary, you have to go all the way to the last verse to pick it up, which was the son of Enos, who was the son of Seth, who was the son of Adam, who was the son of God, or began with God. Now do you see the difference in those genealogies? Mary's, you see, is the bloodline of Christ, and that goes all the way back to David, I mean back to Adam, because we're all sons of Adam. But with regard to His ascension to the royal throne, it only goes back to Abraham, because it's in the Abrahamic covenant that we have the promise of a king. Now you see how beautifully and how accurately Scripture keeps everything? Now, we'll pick this up a little more in detail in our next program, but for now I just want you to remember that the promise of this king over this earthly kingdom all fits with the King of kings, the Lord of lords. Now maybe we can go one more Scripture reference. If you go to Matthew chapter 2, and here we're going to have to stop, in fact I guess we're not going to have time, but in Matthew chapter 2 we find that He is to be called by the wise men from the east, the what? The King. Where is He that is King? Thank you for watching Through the Bible with Les Feldick. Through the Bible is a partner-supported ministry. If this program has been a help to your study of the Scriptures and you'd like to see others enjoy the teaching, your support would be greatly appreciated. Write to us at Les Feldick Ministries, Route 1, Box 760, Kenta, Oklahoma, 74552, or call 1-800-369-7856. Remember, all programs are available in printed form, audio cassette, and videotape. 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